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TOLERANCE 


QL'aa  Htctures 


ADDRESSED   TO   THE   STUDENTS   OF  SEVERAL   OF   THE 
DIVINITY    SCHOOLS    OF   THE   PROTESTANT 

EPISCOPAL    CHURCH 


BY 

PHILLIPS    BROOKS 

Rector  of  Trinity  Church,  Boston 


NEW  YORK 
E.  P.  BUTTON  AND  COMPANY 

31    WEST    TWENTY  THIRD    STREET 
1887 


3(^ 


Copyright,  18&7, 
By  E.  p.  Dutton  &  Co. 


SHnibtrsifB  i^rtsg : 
John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge. 


FIRST   LECTURE. 


Gentlemen  : 

I  HAVE  accepted  with  grateful  pleasure 
the  privilege  of  meeting  you  upon  two 
evenings  and  talking  to  you  upon  Tol- 
erance. I  chose  that  subject  because  I 
had  long  vaguely  thought  of  lecturing 
upon  it,  and  also  because  it  seemed  to  me 
as  if  there  were  no  group  of  men  to  whom 
one  could  so  fitly  speak  upon  it  as  a  gath- 
ering of  students  of  theology.  To  them 
more  than  to  other  men  must  come  the 
puzzling  problems  and  interesting  sugges- 
tions which  the  whole  subject  of  tolerance 
involves. 

I  want  to  speak  this  evening  about  the 
nature  and  the  history  and  the  hope  of 
tolerance.     In  my  other   lecture  I  should 


6  Tolerance. 

like  to  see  the  applications  of  what  I  shall 
have  said  to-day  to  some  of  the  special 
conditions  of  our  time  and  of  our  Church. 
So  we  can  come  nearest  to  covering  the 
ground. 

I  call  my  subject  Tolerance,  not  Tol- 
eration. Tolerance  is  a  disposition :  Tol- 
eration is  the  behavior  in  which  that 
disposition  finds  expression.  A  disposi- 
tion is  to  its  appropriate  behavior  as  a 
man  is  to  his  shadow.  The  shadow  repre- 
sents the  man,  but  it  often  misrepresents 
him.  It  is  larger  than  he  is,  or  smaller.  It 
runs  before  him,  or  it  lags  behind  him, 
according  as  he  stands  related  to  the  light 
which  casts  it.  We  sometimes  have  to 
guess  at  what  the  man  is  by  his  shadow; 
and  so  we  are  constantly  having  to  guess 
at  men's  dispositions  by  their  behavior. 
But  we  never  can  let  ourselves  forget  that 
the  disposition  is  the  living  thing;  and  so 
to  it  our  thought  and  study  must  be 
given.  Therefore  I  speak  of  tolerance, 
and  not  of  toleration. 


First  Lecture.  y 

In  studying  first,  then,  the  nature  of  tol- 
erance, that  much-belauded  and  much- 
misrepresented  grace  of  our  own  time,  we 
want  to  start  with  this  assertion,  —  which 
is,  indeed,  the  key-assertion  of  all  I  have  to 
say,  —  that  it  is  composed  of  two  elements, 
both  of  which  are  necessary  to  its  true 
existence,  and  on  the  harmonious  and  pro- 
portionate blending  of  which  the  quality 
of  the  tolerance  which  is  the  result  de- 
pends. These  elements  are,  first,  positive 
conviction;  and  second,  sympathy  with 
men  whose  convictions  differ  from  our 
own.  Does  it  sound  strange  to  claim  that 
both  these  elements  are  necessary  to  make 
a  true  tolerance?  Have  we  been  in  the 
habit  of  thinking  that  strong,  positive  con- 
viction was  almost  incompatible  with  toler- 
ance? Have  we  perhaps  been  almost 
afraid  to  yield  to  the  temptation  to  let 
ourselves  go  into  the  tolerant  disposition 
of  our  time,  because  it  seemed  to  us  as  if 
there  were  no  place  there  for  that  sure  and 
strong  belief  which  we  knew  was  the  first 


8  Tolerance. 

necessity  of  a  strong  human  life?  It 
would  not  be  strange  if  we  had  all  felt 
such  a  fear.  It  would  be  strange  if  any  of 
us  had  entirely  escaped  it,  so  studiously, 
so  constantly,  so  earnestly  has  the  world 
been  assured  that  positive  faith  and  toler- 
ance have  no  fellowship  with  one  another. 
"  The  only  foundation  for  tolerance,"  said 
Charles  James  Fox,  "  is  a  degree  of  scep- 
ticism." Not  many  months  ago  a  most 
respected  clergyman  of  my  own  town, 
speaking  at  the  dedication  of  a  statue  of 
John  Harvard  in  the  university  which 
bears  his  name,  declared  of  the  Puritans 
by  whom  that  college  was  created :  "  They 
were  intolerant,  as  all  men,  the  world  over, 
in  all  time,  have  always  been,  and  will 
always  be,  when  they  are  in  solemn  earn- 
est for  truth  or  error."  I  think  that  those 
are  melancholy  words.  The  historical  fact 
is  melancholy  enough.  That  fact  we  must 
grant  as  mainly  true,  though  not  without 
fair  and  notable  exceptions;  but  to  fore- 
tell that  man  will  never  come  to  the  condi- 


First  Lecture.  g 

tion  in  which  he  can  be  earnest  and  tolerant 
at  once,  —  that  is  beyond  all  things  melan- 
choly; that  spreads  a  darkness  over  all 
the  future,  and  obliterates  man's  brightest 
hope.  That  condemns  mankind  to  an  end- 
less choice  between  earnest  bigotry  and 
tolerant  indifference,  —  or,  rather,  to  an 
endless  swinging  back  and  forth  between 
the  two  in  hopeless  discontent,  in  everlast- 
ing despair  of  rest.  Against  all  such 
statements  of  despair  we  want  to  take  the 
strongest  ground.  We  want  to  assert  most 
positively  that  so  far  from  earnest  per- 
sonal conviction  and  generous  tolerance 
being  incompatible  with  one  another,  the 
two  are  necessary  each  to  each.  "  It  is 
the  natural  feeling  of  all  of  us,"  said  Fred- 
erick Maurice  in  one  of  those  utterances 
of  his  which  at  first  sound  like  paradoxes, 
and  by  and  by  seem  to  be  axioms,  —  "  it  is 
the  natural  feeling  of  all  of  us  that  charity 
is  founded  upon  the  uncertainty  of  truth. 
I  believe  it  is  founded  on  the  certainty  of 
truth." 


10  Tolerance. 

One  token  that  this  is  true  is  that  only 
with  both  these  elements  present  in  it  does 
tolerance  become  a  clear,  definable,  re- 
spectable position  for  a  man  to  stand  in, 
an  honorable  quality  for  a  character  to 
possess.  Dr.  Holmes,  in  his  Life  of  Mr. 
Emerson,  declares  that  "the  word  'toler- 
ance' is  an  insult  as  applied  by  one  set 
of  well-behaved  people  to  another."  No 
doubt  there  are  insulting  tones  enough  in 
which  the  word  may  be  used;  but  the 
word  itself  is  not  insulting.  It  expresses  a 
perfectly  legitimate  and  honorable  relation 
between  two  minds  and  natures  which 
there  is  no  other  word  to  express.  Here 
is  my  friend  with  whom  I  entirely  agree ; 
his  thoughts  and  convictions  are  the  same 
as  mine.  I  do  not  tolerate  him ;  there  is 
no  place  for  toleration  there.  Here  is  my 
other  friend,  who  disagrees  with  me  entirely. 
I  disagree  with  him.  But  I  respect  him ;  I 
want  him  to  be  true  to  his  convictions ;  and 
while  I  claim  the  right  and  duty  of  arguing 
with  him  and  trying  to  show  him  that  I  am 


First  Lecture.  1 1 

right,  and  he  is  wrong,  I  would  not  silence 
him  by  violence  if  I  could.  I  would  not 
for  the  world  have  him  say  that  he  thinks 
I  am  right  before  his  reason  is  convinced. 
Now,  that  is  tolerance.  Is  there  any  insult 
there?  Is  not  that  a  recognizable,  manly 
position  for  me  to  stand  in  as  regards  my 
friend?  Is  either  his  manhood  or  mine 
injured  or  despised?  But  is  it  not  clear 
also  that  the  healthiness  of  this  tolerance 
which  is  in  me  toward  him  depends  on  its 
integrity?  It  is  because  both  its  elements 
are  there  that  it  is  a  sound  condition, 
worthy  of  his  soul  and  mine.  Take  either 
away,  and  the  element  which  is  left  becomes 
insulting.  But  then  it  is  not  tolerance  which 
is  insulting;  for  this  is  not  tolerance;  for 
tolerance  is  the  meeting  in  perfect  har- 
mony of  earnest  conviction  and  personal 
indulgence. 

Whoever  has  thoughtfully  observed  hu- 
man hfe,  knows  very  well  that  any  quality, 
which  for  its  fullest  perfectness  involves 
two  elements,  will  almost  certainly  present 


12  Tolerance. 

strange  and  perplexing  complications  be- 
fore it  comes  to  its  complete  condition. 
Strange  indeed  is  the  method  of  the 
moral  progress  of  mankind.  Not  as  the 
ship  sails,  moving  through  the  water 
evenly,  all  together,  every  part  keeping 
pace  with  every  other  part ;  rather  as  the 
man  walks,  bringing  forward  first  one  side 
and  then  the  other,  one  side  being  at  any 
given  moment  in  advance  of  the  other, 
equilibrium  being  always  lost  and  regained 
again  a  little  farther  on,  to  be  re-lost  again 
immediately :  so,  as  the  man  walks,  does  the 
moral  progress  of  mankind  advance.  Thus 
it  is  that  conviction  of  truth  and  allowance 
of  dissent  are  never  in  perfect  balance  and 
proportion  to  each  other ;  now  one  and 
now  the  other  of  them  is  always  in  advance, 
as  the  whole  man  in  this  uneven,  sidelong 
fashion  moves  unsteadily  forward  toward 
the  time  when  he  shall  be  tolerant  of  his 
fellow-men  just  in  proportion  to  the  earn- 
estness with  which  he  holds  his  own  well- 
proven  truth. 


First  Lecture.  ij 

This  leads  to  certain  complications  which 
it  will  be  well  to  notice,  because  they  very 
often,  as  I  think,  confuse  our  thought  on 
the  whole  subject,  and  seem  to  leave  us  all 
adrift.  Here  are  two  men  who  stand  and 
look  out  together  over  the  whole  world  of 
opinion.  They  are  not  a  part  of  it,  for 
neither  of  them  has  any  real  opinions  of 
his  own.  They  are  like  men  who  stand 
together  on  a  seashore  rock  and  look  out 
over  the  ocean.  It  is  nothing  to  them 
which  way  the  waves  are  running,  and 
how  they  cross  and  recross  each  other  in 
tumultuous  confusion.  It  is  nothing  to 
these  men  how  other  men  are  thinking. 
They  are  entirely  indulgent.  They  call 
themselves,  and  the  world  calls  them,  tol- 
erant. And  now  suppose  that  one  of  those 
men  gets  a  conviction :  he  becomes  thor- 
oughly in  earnest  for  something  which  he 
believes  is  true.  What  is  the  immediate 
result?  Almost  certainly  there  comes  a 
chill  and  a  reserve  in  his  indulgence.  Now 
it  appears  to  him  to  be  a  dreadful  thing 


14  Tolerance. 

that  other  men  should  think  so  wrongly. 
All  the  indifference  is  gone,  and  the  man 
is  almost  more  than  man,  almost  divinely 
true  and  sound,  if  he  is  not  betrayed  by 
his  earnestness  into  some  sort  of  bigotry, 
some  intolerant  wish  toward  these  men 
who  are  in  error.  He  lifts  the  axe,  or 
lights  the  fire  of  persecution.  Meanwhile 
there  stands  his  brother  where  he  used  to 
stand,  still  smiling  his  universal  smile,  and 
saying  benignly  to  all  the  creeds  and  here- 
sies and  opinions,  "  God  bless  you  every 
one,"  because  he  has  no  real  creed  or 
opinions,  or  even  a  genuine  hearty  heresy 
of  his  own.  And  now  which  of  these  two 
men  shall  we  praise?  Beyond  all  doubt 
the  man  of  earnestness,  the  man  of  positive 
faith.  But  then  he  is  a  bigot !  Will  you 
praise  Torquemada,  standing  in  triumph 
beside  his  burning  victims  in  the  market- 
place in  Seville,  more  than  Montaigne,  a 
century  later,  sitting  in  his  library  at  Paris 
and  patronizing  all  the  faiths  of  which  he 
believed  not  one,  all  of  which  in  his  soul 


First  Lecture.  1 5 

he  despised?  If  Torquemada  ever  had 
been  Hke  IMontaigne,  and  had  come  to  be 
a  persecutor  out  of  pure  conviction,  then 
horrible  as  is  this  which  he  is  doing,  awful 
as  is  the  lurid  flame  which  lights  his  virtue, 
I  must  count  that  he  has  made  true  pro- 
gress ;  for  these  two  good  things  are  in  him, 
—  first,  a  firm  belief  in  something  as  the 
truth  of  God;  and  next,  a  passionate 'de- 
sire that  the  truth  of  God  should  reign 
upon  the  earth. 

But  what  then?  We  know  that  this  is 
not  final.  This  praise  of  the  bigot  is  not 
praise  of  bigotry.  We  are  thankful  for 
the  traveller  that  he  has  left  the  City  of 
Destruction  and  that  he  is  "on  the  way  to 
the  New  Jerusalem ;  but  none  the  less  we 
feel  the  misery  of  the  Slough  of  Despond 
through  which  he  is  struggling  on  the  way. 
Our  Inquisitor  has  made  a  real  advance 
from  the  easy  tolerance  in  which  he  used 
to  live  ;  but  it  has  been  as  if,  having  started 
on  his  journey,  he  went  back  to  get  one 
part  of  his  equipment  without  which  his 


1 6  Tolerance. 

journey  could  not  successfully  be  made. 
The  man  who  thus  goes  on  shore  again  to 
get  his  sails,  creeps  out  of  the  harbor  be- 
hind the  other  sailless  boat,  which  is  only 
drifting  on  the  tide;  but  nevertheless  he 
is  nearer  to  the  ultimate  haven  which  they 
both  are  seeking,  for  the  boat  that  has  no 
sails  will  never  come  there  at  all.  So,  to 
state  it  quite  without  a  figure,  there  are 
times  when  the  intolerant  man,  in  virtue, 
not  of  his  intolerance,  but  of  that  which 
for  the  time  has  caused  him  to  be  intole- 
rant, is  farther  on  toward  the  ultimate 
tolerance  than  his  indulgent  brother  who 
stands  in  horror  at  his  bigotry.  Such  is 
the  curious  complication  which  often  marks 
men's  development  on  the  world's  pro- 
gress in  any  good  attainment.  There 
comes  a  seeming  loss  of  that  which  is  all 
the  time  being  gained.  It  is  like  the  cir- 
cles on  an  eddying  stream.  There  is  one 
point  in  the  circle  which  the  eddy  makes, 
one  drop  of  the  stream's  water,  which  is 
distinctly   going  backward,   going   up   the 


Ursi  Lecture.  ly 

stream.  It  seems  to  be  going  away  from 
the  ocean  and  back  toward  the  fountain. 
It  is  not  so  far  toward  the  ocean  as  another 
drop  which  is  hurrying  by  it  with  its  eager 
face  set  toward  the  sea ;  and  yet  the  back- 
ward-plunging drop  will  reach  the  ocean 
first.  The  drop  which  now  is  hurrying 
seaward  will  have  the  same  weary  circuit 
to  make  before  it  can  really  find  the  sea  it 
seeks.  It  is  a  blessed  thing  to  know  that 
both  of  them,  in  all  their  eddyings  and 
wanderings,  are  borne  upon  the  bosom  of 
a  stream  greater  than  either  of  them,  which 
never  ceases  to  press  onward  to  the  ocean 
which  is  the  final  home  of  all. 

There  is  no  law  which  it  is  miore  neces- 
sary for  one  who  studies  human  life  and 
character  to  understand,  than  this  law  to 
which  I  have  just  alluded.  The  "  law  of  the 
three  conditions  "  we  may  call  it.  The  law 
of  life,  death,  and  the  higher  life  would 
be  its  fuller  name.  Jesus  said,  "  Except  a 
man  be  born  again,  he  cannot  see  the 
kingdom  of  God."    "  Whosoever  loseth  his 


1 8  Tolerance. 

life  for  My  sake,"  he  said,  "  the  same  shall 
save  it."  See  what  some  of  the  illustra- 
tions are.  The  crude  hopefulness  of  boy- 
hood passes  through  the  disappointments 
which  it  is  ?urc  to  meet,  and  comes  out, 
if  it  keeps  its  health,  into  the  robust  and 
sanguine  faith  of  middle  age.  A  merely 
traditional  religion  goes  into  doubt,  and 
gathers  there  strength  of  personal  convic- 
tion, and  comes  forth  the  reasonable  religion 
of  a  full-grown  man.  Innocence  perishes 
in  temptation,  to  be  born  again  out  of  the 
fires  as  virtue.  Life,  death,  and  resurrec- 
tion is  the  law  of  life;  and  bigotry  and 
tolerance  can  never  be  deeply  understood 
unless  we  know  how  easy  indulgence  often 
has  to  die  in  narrow  positive  conviction 
before  it  can  be  born  again  as  the  gener- 
ous tolerance  of  the  thoroughly  believing 
man. 

The  truth  that  qualities  have  their  quali- 
ties, is  one  which  we  need  always  to  re- 
member. You  have  not  told  the  whole 
story  when  you   have  said  that  a  man  is 


First  Lecture.  ig 

kind,  or  brave,  or  truthful,  any  more  than 
you  have  given  a  complete  account  when 
you  have  said  of  the  sunset  or  of  the  bird's 
wing  that  it  is  red,  when  you  have  said 
of  the  sky  or  of  the  violet  that  it  is  blue. 
As  there  are  colors  of  colors,  so  there  are 
qualities  of  qualities.  "  Hoiv  is  he  truth- 
ful, or  brave,  or  kind?"  That  question 
still  remains  for  you  to  ask.  And  in  large 
part  this  quality  of  a  quality  will  be  indi- 
cated by  the  motive  which  at  any  par- 
ticular moment  calls  the  quality  forth 
into  action.  The  qualities  of  qualities  are 
largely  denoted  by  the  colors  of  their  mo- 
tives shining  tlirough.  This  is  quite  true  of 
tolerance.  Let  me  enumerate  very  briefly 
some  of  the  qualities  of  that  quality,  and 
see  how  each  one  is  colored  by  the  hue  of 
its  motive.  I  think  that  in  various  kinds 
of  tolerance  we  can  see  six  colors  dis- 
tinctly shining  through.  First,  there  is  the 
lowest  of  all,  that  of  which  I  have  already 
spoken,  —  the  tolerance  of  pure  indifference, 
the  mere  result  of  aimless  good-nature.     If 


20  Tolerance. 

I  do  not  care,  or  do  not  think  it  possible  to 
know,  whether  there  is  a  God  or  not,  why 
should  I  not  be  perfectly  willing  that  this 
man  should  say  that  there  is,  and  this 
other  man  should  say  that  there  is  not? 
Secondly,  there  is  the  tolerance  of  policy, 
—  the  allowing  of  error  because  it  would  do 
more  harm  than  good  to  try  to  root  it  out, 
the  voluntary  disuse  of  a  right  to  eradicate 
it,  the  leaving  of  the  tares  for  the  wheat's 
sake.  This  is  the  tolerance  of  which  Burke 
speaks  when  he  says  that  "  Toleration  is 
a  part  of  moral  and  political  prudence." 
Thirdly,  there  is  the  tolerance  of  helpless- 
ness. This  is  the  acquiescence  in  the  ut- 
terance of  error  because  we  cannot  help 
ourselves.  It  is  the  tolerance  of  persecuted 
minorities.  It  was  the  tolerance  of  Jeremy 
Taylor,  writing  the  "  Liberty  of  Prophesy- 
ing "  while  the  Parliament  were  masters  in 
the  land.  Fourthly,  there  is  the  tolerance 
of  pure  respect  for  man.  In  entire  dis- 
agreement with  a  man's  opinion,  you  are 
able  still  cordially  to  recognize  his   right 


First  Lecture.  21 

to  his  own  thought,  simply  because  he  is 
a  man,  whether  his  thought  will  do  harm 
or  good.  Fifthly,  there  is  the  tolerance  of 
spiritual  sympathy.  The  man's  opinions 
are  all  wrong ;  but  he  means  well,  and  you 
have  grown  to  feel  the  value  of  your  spirit- 
ual oneness.  And  sixthly,  there  is  the 
tolerance  of  the  enlarged  view  of  truth, 
combined  with  a  cordial  and  entire  faith 
in  God,  This  is  the  tolerance  for  which 
Milton  has  pleaded  in  his  application  of 
the  myth  of  Typhon  and  Osiris,  —  the  tole- 
rance which  grows  up  in  any  man  who  is 
aware  that  truth  is  larger  than  his  concep- 
tion of  it,  and  that  what  seem  to  be  other 
men's  errors  must  often  be  other  parts  of 
the  truth  of  which  he  has  only  a  portion, 
and  that  truth  is  God's  child,  and  the 
fortunes  of  truth  are  God's  care  as  well 
as  his. 

These  are  the  six,  —  indifference,  policy, 
helplessness,  human  respect,  spiritual  sym- 
pathy, the  vastness  of  God's  truth.  These 
are  the  different  colors   which  may  shine 


22  Tolerance. 

through  men's  tolerances  and  show  what 
is  the  quality  of  this  quality  in  each  of 
them.  You  see  where  the  group  divides, 
—  in  the  middle.  The  first  three  kinds  of 
tolerance  have  something  base  about  them  ; 
the  last  three  are  all  noble.  Just  where 
that  cleavage  and  division  runs,  the  death 
of  tolerance  of  which  I  spoke  a  while  ago, 
is  very  likely  to  come  in.  Just  there,  a 
man  entering  into  the  power  of  some 
strong  conviction  is  liable  to  become  in- 
tolerant ;  and  his  intolerance,  coming  there 
and  thus,  is  full  of  hope  for  the  better  tol- 
erance which  lies  in  its  three  degrees  be- 
yond. The  man  is  at  sea  only  because  he 
has  set  sail  from  the  solid  shore  which  is 
malarious  and  barren,  to  reach  by  and  by 
the  far  more  solid  land  which  is  bright  and 
healthy  and  fruitful.  Do  you  not  see  how 
necessary  it  is  to  know  the  kind  of  a  man's 
tolerance,  to  see  what  is  the  quality  of  this 
quality  in  every  tolerant  man? 

If  we  try  to  get  still  deeper  at  the  roots 
of  the  impression  which  prevails  so  widely, 


First  Lecture.  2^ 

that  positive  convictions  are  unnecessary 
to,  and  even  incompatible  with,  the  toler- 
ance of  opinions  which  are  different  from 
our  own,  I  think  that  we  shall  find  that 
it  results  from  the  low  and  meagre  idea 
which  so  many  people,  even  of  those  who 
talk  the  most  about  the  sacredness  of  their 
convictions,  have  with  regard  to  what  a 
real  conviction  is.  A  true  conviction, 
anything  thoroughly  believed,  is  personal. 
It  becomes  part  of  the  believer's  character 
as  well  as  a  possession  of  his  brain;  it 
makes  him  another  and  a  deeper  man. 
And  every  deepening  of  a  human  nature 
centralizes  it,  so  to  speak;  carries  it  in, 
that  is,  to  the  centre  of  the  sphere  upon 
whose  surface  are  described  all  the  spe- 
cific faiths  of  men.  At  the  centre  of  that 
sphere  sits  the  Spirit  of  Truth,  of  which 
all  these  specific  faiths  of  men  are  the 
more  or  less  imperfect  and  distorted  utter- 
ances. The  man  who  comes  into  that 
central  place  sits  there  with  the  Spirit  of 
Truth  and  feels  her  power  going  out  to  the 


24  Tolerance. 

faiths  she  feeds  on  every  side.  It  is  in 
virtue  of  that  centrahiess  which  he  has 
reached  that  he  is  able  to  understand  and 
sympathize  with  the  whole.  Deepen  the 
Desert  of  Sahara  to  the  centre  of  the  earth, 
and  it  will  know  how  the  Himalayas  came 
to  be  so  rocky  and  so  high.  And  so  the 
advice  to  give  to  every  bigot  whom  you 
want  to  make  a  tolerant  man  must  be,  not, 
"  Hold  your  faith  more  lightly,  and  make 
less  of  it;"  but,  "Hold  your  faith  more 
profoundly,  and  make  more  of  it.  Get 
down  to  its  first  spiritual  meaning;  grasp 
its  fundamental  truth.  So  you  will  be  glad 
that  your  brother  starts  from  that  same 
centre,  though  he  strikes  the  circumfer- 
ence at  quite  another  point  from  yours." 
It  is  true,  strange  as  it  sounds  at  first,  that 
the  more  deeply  and  spiritually  a  man 
believes  in  fixed  endless  punishment  of 
wicked  men,  the  more,  and  not  the  less, 
tolerant  he  will  become  of  his  brother  who 
cherishes  the  eternal  hope. 

Perhaps  it  is  stating  the  same  truth  in  a 


First  Lecture.  2<y 

little  dififerent  way  when  we  say  that  true 
tolerance  consists  in  the  love  of  truth  and 
the  love  of  man,  each  brought  to  its  per- 
fection and  living  in  perfect  harmony  with 
one  another ;  but  that  these  two  great  afifec- 
tions  are  perfect  and  in  perfect  harmony 
only  when  they  are  orbed  and  enfolded 
in  the  yet  greater  affection  of  the  love 
of  God.  The  love  of  truth  alone  grows 
cruel.  It  has  no  pity  for  man.  It  cries 
out,  "  What  matter  is  a  human  life  tortured 
or  killed  for  Truth,  crushed  under  the 
chariot-wheels  with  which  she  travels  to 
her  kingdom?"  The  stake-fires  and  the 
scaffolds  belong  to  it.  And  the  love  of 
man  alone  grows  weak.  It  trims  and 
moulds  and  travesties  the  truth  to  suit 
men's  whims.  "Do  you  want  truth  to  be 
this?  Then  this  it  shall  be,"  it  cries  to 
the  faithless  or  the  lazy  soul.  The  boy  of 
whom  the  stranger  asked  the  way  to  Farm- 
ington  is  the  very  image  of  the  love  of 
man  that  is  not  mingled  and  harmonized 
with  love  for  truth.     "It  is  eight  miles," 


26  Tolerance. 

the  boy  replied.  "  Are  you  sure  that  it  is 
so  far  as  that?"  the  weary  traveller  asked. 
The  boy,  with  his  big  heart  overrunning 
with  the  milk  of  human  kindness,  looked  at 
him  and  replied,  "Well,  seeing  you  are 
pretty  tired,  I  will  call  it  seven  miles." 
How  much  of  would-be  tolerance  has 
sounded  in  our  ears  like  that!  The  love 
of  truth  alone  is  cruel ;  the  love  of  man 
alone  is  weak  and  sentimental.  It  is  only 
when  truth  and  man  are  loved  within  the 
love  of  God,  loved  for  His  sake,  truth 
loved  as  His  utterance,  man  loved  as  His 
child,  —  only  then  is  it  that  they  meet  and 
blend  in  tolerance.  Therefore  it  is  that 
absolute  and  steadfast  tolerance,  so  far 
from  being  the  enemy  of  religion,  as  men 
have  foolishly  said,  can  only  come  relig- 
iously, can  never  be  complete  till  man 
completely  loves  his  God. 

May  I  not  turn,  as  I  speak,  and  ask  the 
personal  experience  of  the  thoughtful  stu- 
dents who  hear  me  to  bear  witness  to  the 
truth    of  what  I  have    said?     Has    it  not 


First  Lecture.  2j 

been  true  with  you,  that  the  more  sure  you 
have  been,  the  more  tolerant  you  have 
been  ahvays  ?  Why  is  it  that  we  are  often 
so  much  more  ready  to  tolerate  those  who 
dififer  from  us  by  the  entire  heaven,  than 
those  whose  different  light  twinkles  close 
by  our  side  in  the  same  constellation?  We 
have  full  tolerance  for  the  Buddhist  and  the 
Mohammedan  ;  less  for  the  Quaker  and  the 
Congregationalist ;  least  of  all  for  the  man 
of  our  own  Church,  but  of  another  "  school 
of  thought"  from  ours.  "The  conforming 
to  ceremony  hath  been  more  exacted  than 
the  conforming  to  Christianity,"  declared 
Lord  Falkland  of  the  Government  of  his 
day  in  a  speech  in  the  Parliament  of  1640. 
Does  it  not  all  mean  that  where  the  dif- 
ference is  greatest,  we  are  most  sure  of  our 
ground,  and  so  most  tolerant?  Where  the 
difference  is  least,  we  have  most  misgivings, 
and  there  tolerance  is  weak.  Does  it  not 
all  witness  to  the  truth  of  our  doctrine 
that  the  best  tolerance  demands  assured 
and  settled  faith? 


28  Tolerance. 

Perhaps  it  is  not  desirable,  certainly  ic 
is  not  possible,  in  the  short  space  which  1 
can  give  to  that  portion  of  my  subject,  to 
undertake  anything  like  a  detailed  history 
of  the  growth  of  the  spirit  of  tolerance 
among  mankind.  I  only  say  in  passing 
that  there  are  few  lubjects  so  interesting 
and  important  which  have  been  so  inade- 
quately treated.  There  is  no  worthy  book 
upon  the  subject.  To  write  one  might 
well  be  the  satisfaction  and  honor  of  any 
man's  life.  All  that  I  undertake  to  do  in 
this  direction  now  is  just  to  indicate  some 
points  in  the  history  of  tolerance  which 
seem  to  illustrate  the  principles  of  toler- 
ance which  I  have  been  trying  to  describe, 
confining  myself  entirely  to  that  part  of 
the  history  of  tolerance  which  lies  within 
the  region  of  the  Christian  Faith. 

The  Jews  were  intolerant  deliberately 
and  on  purpose.  It  was  the  other  side 
of  human  progress  which  was  being  moved 
forward  in  their  history.  They  were  ap- 
pointed to  learn  and  manifest  the  power 


First  Lecture.  29 

of  positive  belief.  Their  history  is  like  the 
hard,  tight  stalk  of  a  plant  which  is  built 
compactly  and  exclusively,  just  in  order 
that  it  may  minister  to  a  great  radiant, 
generous  flower  which  is  to  bloom  upon 
its  summit.  That  flower  came  in  Christ; 
and  there  in  Him  was  set  clearly  and  per- 
fectly before  the  world  the  pattern  of  the 
consummate  tolerance.  The  love  of  truth 
and  the  love  of  man,  each  complete  and 
each  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  other, 
within  the  embracing  love  of  God, — is  not 
that  the  life  of  Jesus?  Not  for  a  moment 
does  one  doubt  His  absolute  hold  on 
truth ;  it  is  so  deep  that  He  not  merely 
holds  the  truth,  He  is  the  truth.  And 
yet  His  patient,  willing  indulgence  of  His 
brethren.  His  utter  refusal  to  use  any  power 
except  reason  and  spiritual  persuasion  to 
turn  them  from  their  error,  —  all  this  is 
just  as  clear  as  His  belief;  and  in  Him 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  two  essen- 
tially belong  together. 

With  this  high,  clear  note  struck,  with 


50  Tolerance. 

this  image  and  pattern  burning  before  her 
for  her  guidance,  the  Church  started  on 
the  long,  slow  struggle  to  attain  the  same 
high  tolerance,  to  match  the  pattern  of 
her  Master  with  her  obedient  life.  In  the 
Apostolic  Church  and  that  which  imme- 
diately followed  it,  the  spirit  of  tolerance 
was  kept  in  a  remarkable  degree.  Here 
and  there,  no  doubt,  we  see  the  signs  of 
a  crowding  forward  on  the  side  of  intol- 
erant positive  belief ;  but  the  spirit  of 
brotherly  kindness  was  so  strong  that  al- 
most immediately  the  other  side,  the  side 
of  tolerant  indulgence,  was  brought  up  to 
meet  it.  And  then,  in  those  earliest  days, 
the  Church  was  persecuted ;  and  persecu- 
tion always  makes  the  persecuted  man  or 
church  a  champion  of  tolerance. 

With  the  cessation  of  persecution,  with 
the  establishment  of  Christianity  under 
Constantine,  came,  in  the  midst  of  many 
other  evils,  the  enthronement  and  domin- 
ion of  intolerance.  The  persecution  of 
Jews,  of  pagans,  and  of   heretics,  thence- 


First  Lecture.  p 

forth  became  accepted.  The  love  of  truth, 
as  men  interpreted  it,  had  cast  away  the 
love  of  man,  and  the  reason  lay  in  the 
abandonment  or  the  corruption  of  the 
love    of  God. 

Like  so  many  other  practices  and  dis- 
positions of  mankind,  Saint  Augustine  took 
the  disposition  of  intolerance  and  backed 
it  with  theory  and  established  it  into  a 
principle.  Indeed,  the  life  of  Augustine 
illustrates  within  itself  much  of  what  we 
have  said  upon  our  subject.  As  he  be- 
came more  earnest,  he  became  less  toler- 
ant. These  are  his  words  in  his  earlier 
days :  "  Be  not  offended  at  seeing  among 
yourselves  sinners,  and  even  heretics. 
What  know  you  of  their  future  state? 
Nay,  more,  what  know  you  of  their  pres- 
ent state  in  the  mind  of  God?"  And 
these  are  his  words  much  later  in  his 
fervid  and  eager  life:  "I  abandoned  my 
first  opinion,  overcome  not  so  much  by 
the  reason  of  those  who  opposed  it,  as  by 
the    examples   which   they  set  before  my 


^2  Tolerance. 

eyes.  They  showed  me  my  own  city  of 
Hippo,  which,  after  having  belonged  wholly 
to  the  Donatists,  w^as  converted  and  re- 
united to  the  Catholic  Church  by  the  fear 
of  the  imperial  laws,  and  which  has  now 
such  a  horror  for  that  unhappy  schism 
that  you  could  not  believe  that  it  had  ever 
been  engaged  in  it."  That  method  of  con- 
version "  by  the  fear  of  the  imperial  laws  " 
the  great  African  bishop  left  firmly  estab- 
lished in  the  Christian  Church. 

And  so  it  remained  through  all  the 
Middle  Ages,  with  only  occasional  out- 
breaks of  local  and  individual  remon- 
strance. It  hardened  into  dogma,  as  at 
the  first  Lateran  Council.  It  blazed  out 
in  fury,  as  when  De  Montfort  slaughtered 
the  Albigenses  in  1209.  It  struck  its  roots 
deep  as  an  institution  when  Innocent  the 
Third  established  the  Inquisition  in  1208. 
The  cloud  broke  open  for  a  moment  and 
let  a  ray  of  sunlight  through,  as  in  the 
teaching  of  a  great,  generous-hearted  man 
like    Saint  Bernard.      There  were  pauses 


First  Lecture.  5j 

in  the  dreadful  history  of  persecution  be- 
cause there  were  times  of  absolute  con- 
formity, when  there  were  no  heretics  to 
persecute ;  but  the  whole  dark  tenor  of 
the  mediaeval  history  is  really  one  and 
the  same.  It  is  what  Saint  Thomas 
Aquinas  wrote  with  such  fearful,  calm 
deliberation  and  such  blankly  fallacious 
reasoning:  "If  the  corrupters  of  money, 
and  malefactors  of  other  sorts,  are  at  once 
by  secular  princes  justly  given  up  to  death, 
much  more  may  heretics,  as  soon  as  they 
are  convicted  of  their  heresy,  be  not 
merely  excommunicated,  but  also  justly 
killed."  That  was  the  sum  of  mediaeval 
logic  on  the  matter. 

The  Protestant  Reformation  brought 
no  sudden  change  of  theory.  The  prin- 
ciple of  persecution  was  asserted  by  many 
of  the  Reformed  Confessions ;  it  was  held 
and  declared  by  Luther,  Calvin,  Beza, 
Knox,  and  even  by  Melanchthon,  Cranmer, 
and  Ridley.  "  One  mass,"  cried  John 
Knox,  "  is  more  fearful  to  me  than  if  ten 
3 


^  Tolerance. 

thousand  armed  enemies  were  landed  in 
any  part  of  the  reahn."  But  though  the 
theory  remained,  it  was  soon  evident  that 
another  spirit  was  at  work  within  it.  Men 
of  hght  stood  up  here  and  there,  and,  full 
of  the  belief  in  positive  truth,  still  pleaded 
for  tolerance.  Of  all  the  Reformers,  in 
this  respect,  Zwingli,  who  so  often  in  the 
days  of  darkness  is  the  man  of  light,  is 
the  noblest  and  clearest.  At  the  confer- 
ence in  the  Marburg  he  contrasts  most 
favorably  with  Luther  in  his  willingness 
to  be  reconciled  for  the  good  of  the  com- 
mon cause ;  and  he  was  one  of  the  very 
few  who  in  those  days  believed  that  the 
good  and  earnest  heathen  could  be  saved. 
The  same  reaching  after  better  light  ap- 
pears in  more  unlikely  places.  Even  Cal- 
vin, when  he  gave  up  the  proofs  of  the 
heresy  of  Servetus,  was  moved  to  say  that 
it  seemed  to  him  that  since  he  did  not 
wield  the  sword  of  Justice,  it  was  his  duty 
to  confute  heresy  by  sound  doctrine,  rather 
than  to  seek  to  extirpate  it  by  any  other 


First  Lecture.  55 

method ;  and  Oliver  Cromwell,  who,  after 
all,  struck  more  nearly  than  any  other 
Englishman  of  his  time  the  true  note  of 
tolerance,  wrote  in  his  account  of  the 
storming  of  Bristol,  which  was  read  in  all 
the  congregations  about  London  on  the 
2 1st  of  September,  1645  •  "  For,  brethren, 
in  things  of  the  mind  we  look  for  no  com- 
pulsion but  that  of  light  and  reason." 

These  men  were  dogmatists,  distinctly 
men  of  doctrine.  It  is  a  blessed  thing 
that  in  all  times,  and  never  more  richly 
than  in  the  Reformation  days,  there  have 
always  been  other  men  to  whom  religion 
has  not  presented  itself  as  a  system  of 
doctrine,  but  as  an  elemental  life  in  which 
the  soul  of  man  came  into  very  direct  and 
close  communion  with  the  soul  of  God. 
It  is  the  mystics  of  every  age  who  have 
done  most  to  blend  the  love  of  truth  and 
the  love  of  man  within  the  love  of  God, 
and  so  to  keep  alive  or  to  restore  a  healthy 
tolerance.  Indeed,  the  mystic  spirit  has 
been  almost  like  a  deep  and  quiet  pool  in 


^6  Tolerance. 

which  tolerance,  when  it  has  been  growing 
old  and  weak,  has  been  again  and  again 
sent  back  to  bathe  itself  and  to  renew  its 
youth  and  vigor.  The  German  mystics  of 
the  fourteenth  century  made  ready  for  the 
great  enfranchisement  of  the  fifteenth.  The 
English  Platonists,  who  had  the  mystic 
spirit  very  strongly,  became  almost  the 
re-creators  of  tolerance  in  the  English 
Church.  The  mysticism  of  to-day  gives 
great  hope  for  the  earnest  freedom  of  the 
future. 

I  must  not  try,  interesting  as  the  task 
might  be,  to  enter  into  the  vexed  question 
of  the  tolerance  or  intolerance,  or  rather 
the  mixture  of  tolerance  and  intolerance, 
in  the  men  who  brought  the  Christian 
religion  to  our  American  shores,  and  espe- 
cially in  the  Puritans  who  came  from  Eng- 
land. Three  things  concerning  them  are 
worthy  of  our  notice,  —  first,  that  the  Puri- 
tans, who  came  direct  from  England,  are 
always  to  be  distinguished  from  the  Pil- 
grims, who  came  by  way  of  Holland  and 


First  Lecture.  ^y 

caught  some  of  the  broader  spirit  of  that 
"  nursery  of  freedom  and  good-will;  "  sec- 
ond, that  the  noblest  utterance  of  hopeful 
tolerance  in  all  that  noble  century  was  in 
the  famous  speech  in  which  John  Robinson, 
their  minister,  bade  loving  farewell  to  his 
departing  flock  at  Leyden,  in  which  occur 
those  memorable  words :  "  I  am  verily 
persuaded,  I  am  very  confident,  that  the 
Lord  has  more  truth  yet  to  break  out  of 
His  holy  Word ;  "  and  thirdly,  that  some- 
where in  the  bitter  heart  of  Puritanism  was 
hidden  the  power  which,  partly  by  devel- 
opment, and  partly  by  reaction,  was  to 
produce  the  freedom  of  these  modern 
days. 

Confused,  irregular,  forever  turning  in- 
side out,  forever  going  back  upon  itself, 
the  history  of  Christianity,  however  super- 
ficially we  glance  at  it,  seems  to  bear  wit- 
ness to  three  things,  —  first,  that  every 
hard  bigotry  is  always  on  the  brink  of 
turning  into  tolerance,  and  every  loose  tol- 
erance of  hardening  into  bigotry;   second, 


3<5  Tolerance. 

that  on  the  whole,  positive  belief  and 
tolerance  arc  struggling  toward  a  final  har- 
mony; and  third,  that  true  tolerance  be- 
longs with  profound  piety  and  earnest 
spiritual  life.  In  those  three  facts  lie 
wrapped  up  together  the  philosophy  and 
the  hope  of  tolerance. 

There  is  one  other  study  in  the  history 
of  tolerance  to  which  I  should  like  to  point 
your  thoughts,  but  which  it  would  need  at 
least  a  whole  lecture  to  follow  out  in  any- 
thing like  complete  detail.  In  modern 
times  there  are  six  books,  five  of  them 
proceeding  from  the  English  race,  and  the 
other  one  having  close  connection  with 
and  influence  upon  that  English  race,  all 
of  them  books  of  remarkable  literary  and 
historical  value,  which,  taken  together,  pre- 
sent the  feeling  of  our  race  toward  toler- 
ance most  picturesquely  and  correctly. 
Let  me  recall  to  you  their  names,  and 
commend  you  to  the  study  of  them  in 
connection  with  each  other. 

Of  these  six  books,  three  belong  abso- 


First  Lecture.  ^g 

lutely  to  the  seventeenth  century,  one 
hovers  between  the  seventeenth  and  the 
eighteenth,  one  is  most  characteristically 
of  the  eighteenth,  and  one  is  a  nineteenth- 
century  book  through  and  through. 

The  first,  of  course,  is  Milton's  stately 
work,  the  "  Areopagitica,  or  the  Speech 
for  the  Liberty  of  Unlicenc'd  Printing." 
It  was  born  of  a  special  occasion  in  the 
poet's  life;  but  in  it  the  noblest  spirit 
of  his  time  finds  utterance,  as  fire  will 
burst  forth  through  any  chink  that  offers. 
Its  style  is  like  a  king's  robe,  stiff  with 
embroidery  of  gold  and  jewels ;  but,  as 
always  in  Milton,  the  grandeur  of  lan- 
guage does  not  impair  the  clearness  of  the 
thought.  The  book  glows  with  the  double 
love  of  liberty  and  truth.  Its  argument  is 
in  the  first  place  for  the  reader's  rights ;  in 
the  second  place  for  the  impossibility  of 
enforcing  censorship  ;  in  the  third  place  for 
the  incompetence  of  censors;  and  finally 
for  the  dignity  of  the  teacher.  It  is  a 
noble,    all-embracing    plea;    and    yet    he 


40  Tolerance. 

draws  back  from  its  last  conclusions.  "  I 
mean  not  tolerated  popery  and  open  super- 
stition," he  declares  ;  but  when  we  are  read- 
ing of  the  seventeenth  century,  we  never 
can  forget  that  popery  then  was  quite  as 
much  a  political  as  a  religious  question. 

In  1644,  the  same  year  with  Milton's 
lofty  work,  there  was  put  forth  another, 
which  is  to-day  almost  unknown.  It  wears 
no  king's  robe,  but  rather  the  clumsy 
gown  of  a  Puritan  saint.  So  quaint  as  to 
be  almost  unreadable,  full  of  forced  con- 
ceits, involved  and  confused  in  plan  and  lan- 
guage, Roger  Williams's  "  Bloody  Tenent 
of  Persecution  for  Cause  of  Conscience  "  is 
yet  perhaps  the  broadest  and  most  unhes- 
itating plea  for  tolerance  in  all  its  century. 
It  did  great  work,  and  excited  fierce  dis- 
cussion in  its  time.  John  Cotton,  of  Bos- 
ton, answered  it,  in  the  style  of  his  day, 
with  "  The  Bloody  Tenent  of  Persecution 
washed  and  made  white  in  the  Blood  of 
the  Lamb ;  "  to  which  the  persecuted  apos- 
tle of  Rhode  Island  answered  with  "  The 


First  Lecture.  41 

Bloody  Tenent  yet  more  bloody  by  Mr. 
Cotton's  endeav^or  to  wash  it  white."  The 
first  book  in  the  controversy  is  the  only 
valuable  one  of  the  scries.  It  is  a  dia- 
logue between  Truth  and  Peace.  Its  lan- 
guage, its  imagery,  and  the  grounds  of  its 
argument  are  Scriptural.  Its  protest  is 
that  the  armies  of  Truth,  like  the  armies 
of  the  Apocalypse,  "  must  have  no  sword, 
helmet,  breastplate,  shield,  or  horse  but 
what  is  spiritual  and  of  a  heavenly  nature." 
In  that  statement  there  is  the  sum  of  the 
whole  matter. 

After  the  Puritan  and  the  Heretic  comes 
the  Churchman.  Bishop  Jeremy  Taylor's 
"  Liberty  of  Prophesying "  appeared  in 
1647.  The  music  of  the  master  of  sen- 
tences is  still  in  the  world's  ears.  The 
service  which  he  rendered  to  the  simplicity 
of  truth  can  never  be  forgotten.  His  dem- 
onstration of  the  futility  of  intolerance 
leaves  no  room  for  dispute.  And  yet  the 
book  has  not  the  greatness  of  Milton's  or 
of  Roger  Williams's.     It  is  the  book  of  an 


42  Tolerance. 

ecclesiastic.  It  deals  rather  with  the  im- 
possibility of  compulsion,  as  if,  if  it  were 
possible,  compulsion  would  not  be  so  bad 
a  thing.  Its  highest  spirit  is  perhaps 
summed  up  in  one  sentence,  in  which  it 
declares  that  "  It  is  best  every  man  be 
left  in  that  liberty  from  which  no  man  can 
justly  take  him  unless  he  assure  him  from 
error."  Here  there  is  an  alternative  sug- 
gested ;  although  it  is  also  suggested  that 
that  alternative  is  unlikely  or  impossible. 
But  the  very  suggestion  makes  us  less  sur- 
prised to  hear  how  at  the  Restoration  the 
good  bishop  became  at  least  a  less  ardent 
champion  of  tolerance  than  he  had  been  in 
his  days  of  exile  and  distress. 

Coleridge  has  compared  Milton's  work 
with  Taylor's,  and  has  declared,  with  un- 
necessary harshness  and  insinuation,  that 
"  the  man  who  in  reading  the  two  does  not 
feel  the  contrast  between  the  single-mind- 
edness  of  the  one,  and  the  strabismus  in 
the  other,  is  —  in  the  road  to  preferment." 
On   the    other   hand,    our   own    historian, 


First  Lecture.  4} 

George  Bancroft,  has  a  glowing  passage 
in  which  he  makes  comparison  between 
Jeremy  Taylor  and  Roger  Williams.  The 
latter  he  declares  to  be  "  the  harbinger  of 
Milton  and  the  precursor  and  superior  of 
Jeremy  Taylor."  "Taylor,"  he  says,  "  lim- 
ited his  toleration  to  a  few  Christian  sects ; 
the  wisdom  of  Williams  compassed  man- 
kind." There  is  truth  in  what  both  Cole- 
ridge and  Bancroft  say  ;  and  yet  the  "  Lib- 
erty of  Prophesying"  had  a  place  which 
neither  of  the  other  books  could  have  filled 
in  English  life  and  literature  and  religion. 

The  fourth  of  the  great  books  of  toler- 
ance is  Locke's  "  Letter  of  Toleration,'' 
which  was  published  in  1689.  By  that 
time  the  spirit  of  the  eighteenth  century 
was  already  in  the  air,  and  the  high  ideal 
life  of  the  earlier  part  of  the  seventeenth 
century  had  vanished.  Locke  belonged 
to  the  coming  age,  which  he  was  doing 
more  than  any  other  Englishman  to  cre- 
ate;  and  his  notion  of  tolerance  is  all 
characteristic    of    himself       It    is    of    the 


44  Tolerance. 

earth,  earthy.  It  is  all  based  on  his  con- 
tract theory  of  government.  He  denies 
altogether  that  the  care  of  souls  belongs 
to  the  civil  magistrate,  because  it  has  never 
been  committed  to  him.  His  book  is  to 
Milton's,  or  Williams's,  or  Taylor's,  what 
the  lawyer  in  the  community  is  to  the 
poet,  the  philanthropist,  or  the  priest. 

The  most  powerful  and  the  most  charac- 
teristic book  of  tolerance  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  Lessing's  "  Nathan  the  Wise,"  be- 
longs not  to  England,  but  to  Germany.  Its 
idea  is  that  of  the  ring-story,  which  in  it  is 
adapted  from  Boccaccio.  Neither  of  the 
three  great  religions,  Jewish,  Christian,  or 
Mohammedan,  is  exclusively  or  even  pre- 
eminently true.  Every  man  born  in  one 
of  them  should  tarry  in  his  birthplace.  It 
is  in  the  truest  sense  a  book  of  scepticism. 
The  truth  which  it  discovers,  the  inspira- 
tion it  imparts,  are  of  the  sceptic's  kind. 
It  is  the  book  which  springs  from  and 
which  serves  a  transition  time.  It  is  a 
book  for  the  world  to  rest  on  for  a  moment, 


First  Lecture.  ^3, 

and  then  almost  immediately  outgrow. 
The  far  less-known  work  of  Lessing,  his 
treatise  on  "The  Education  of  the  Human 
Race,"  is  a  much  nobler  book,  and  in  its 
indirect  and  more  unconscious  way  does 
greater  work  for  tolerance. 

And  so,  to  come  to  our  own  age,  there 
is  no  need  to  do  more  than  name  John 
Stuart  Mill's  "  On  Liberty  "  as  the  utter- 
ance of  the  true  nineteenth-century  voice 
on  tolerance.  It  is  utilitarian  in  a  very 
high  but  a  very  distinct  sense.  The  use- 
fulness of  tolerance ;  how  both  silenced 
truth  and  silenced  error,  and  men  who 
need  truth,  and  the  institutions  of  men 
which  need  men  who  have  free  access  to 
discussion ;  how  all  of  these  will  suffer  if 
thought  be  enchained,  —  this  is  his  argu- 
ment. The  usefulness  of  tolerance,  —  not 
directly  its  glory,  its  obligation,  or  its 
sacredness,  —  the  usefulness  of  tolerance 
is  what  our  prophet  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury stands  up  to  proclaim  with  his  clear 
logic  and  strong  style. 


4()  Tolerance. 

These  are  the  six  books.  The  first  are 
greater  than  the  last.  The  first  three 
books  strike  a  more  lofty  note  and  paint 
a  purer  color,  because  they  define  a  higher 
motive  of  tolerance  than  the  last  three. 
This  is  because  the  seventeenth  century  is 
higher  than  the  eighteenth,  and  because, 
after  all,  the  best  spirit  of  the  nineteenth 
century  is  not  really  in  its  book  on  toler- 
ance. Perhaps  it  is  not  in  the  tolerance  of 
our  time  itself.  Century  of  tolerance  as 
ours  is,  we  all  know  how  much  of  the  deep- 
est spiritual  life  of  our  time,  while  it  may 
have  looked  with  no  dislike  upon  the  tol- 
erant dispositions  which  were  all  about  it, 
has  not  directly  and  enthusiastically  lent 
them  its  inspiration. 

And  this  leads  me  at  once  to  what  I 
want  to  say  about  the  closing  portion  of 
my  theme, — the  hope  of  tolerance.  I  have 
spoken  quite  in  vain  unless  you  see  how 
deeply  I  believe  that  the  value  of  tolerance 
lies  in  its  devoutness.  I  have  tried  to  show 
not   merely  that  a  man  may  be  cordially 


First  Lecture.  47 

tolerant  and  yet  be  devoutly  spiritual,  but 
also  that  a  man  cannot  attain  to  the  highest 
tolerance  without  being  devoutly  spiritual. 
Too  long  have  piety  and  tolerance  seemed 
to  be  open  foes,  or  to  keep  but  an  armed 
truce  with  one  another.  Too  long  have 
young  thinkers  on  religion  imagined  that  it 
was  disloyal  to  the  truth  they  held,  and  to 
the  Master  whom  they  loved,  to  strive  after 
cordial  sympathy  with  and  understanding 
of  the  earnest  men  and  systems  who  were 
farthest  from  their  truth  and  from  their 
Master.  Here  is  the  first  hope  for  toler- 
ance, —  not  for  its  wider  extent,  but  for  its 
better  kind.  It  will  grow  more  and  more 
religious.  It  will  be  filled  with  deeper 
piety.  We  shall  not  in  moral  perplexity 
hope  that  a  man  may  be  tolerant  in  spite 
of  his  devoutness ;  we  shall  confidently 
expect  a  man  to  be  tolerant  because  he  is 
devout.  The  first  duty,  I  think,  of  the 
young  students  of  to-day,  whose  mature 
work  lies  in  the  future,  is  to  adjust  their 
minds  to  that  expectation,  and  always  to 


48  Tolerance. 

make  themselves  think  of  piety  and  toler- 
ance, not  as  enemies,  but  as  dear  friends. 

When  the  time  comes  in  which  that 
friendship  of  piety  and  tolerance  shall  be 
fully  asserted  and  accepted,  then  will  be 
written  a  greater  book  than  any  of  those 
which  have  been  dedicated  to  the  praise  of 
Freedom,  Then  the  Milton  or  the  Mill  of 
that  distant  day,  inspired  with  a  yet  more 
glowing  love  for  liberty,  feeling  the  power 
of  a  divine  utilitarianism,  will  be  able  to 
describe  tolerance  so  that  it  shall  seem 
to  be  not,  as  it  has  so  often  seemed,  the 
license  of  self-will  or  the  refuge  of  despair, 
but  the  broadest  and  deepest  obedience  of 
the  soul  to  Christ,  and  the  full  flower  of  the 
ripest  piety  of  the  most  earnest  sainthood. 
In  such  presentation  of  herself,  which  is 
her  only  true  presentation.  Tolerance  must 
claim  the  heart  of  the  world. 

Until  that  day  arrives  it  is  our  duty  to 
strive  that  tolerance  shall  not  be  travestied 
and  misdescribed  either  by  bigotry  on  the 
one  side,  or  by  what  is  called  "free  thought" 


First  Lecture.  4g 

upon  the  other.  Before  all  efforts  for  the 
extension  of  any  principle  or  power  must 
always  come  the  effort  to  understand  and 
to  define  it  rightly ;  we  must  know  what  it 
is  before  we  can  be  enthusiastic  for  it  our- 
selves, or  enthusiastically  urge  it  on  our 
fcllow-men. 

In  all  this  long  lecture  I  have  not  till 
now  attempted  to  give  a  definition  of  tole- 
•  ranee.  I  have  felt  almost  as  one  feels 
about  life,  —  that  he  wants  to  live  before  he 
tries  to  tell  himself  or  his  brethren  what 
life  is ;  but  now  may  we  not  say  of  tole- 
rance that  it  is  this  :  "  The  willing  consent 
that  other  men  should  hold  and  express 
opinions  with  which  we  disagree,  until  they 
are  convinced  by  reason  that  those  opin- 
ions are  untrue"?  There  are  five  things 
involved  in  that  definition  which  I  must 
beg  you  to  notice.  First,  the  consent  is 
willing;  it  is  no  mere  yielding  of  despair. 
It  might  have  all  the  power  to  put  down 
the  error  by  force  which  pope  or  parlia- 
ment ever  possessed,  and  it  would  never 

4 


^o  Tolerance. 

for  a  moment  dream  of  using  it.  On  the 
other  hand,  secondly,  it  is  simply  consent 
Tolerance  is  not  called  upon  to  champion 
the  cause  in  which  it  disbelieves,  nor  to 
lend  trumpets  through  which  what  it  be- 
lieves to  be  error  may  be  blown.  For, 
thirdly,  it  is  of  the  very  essence  of  tolerance 
that  there  should  be  disagreement;  and 
disagreement  involves  the  positive  con- 
viction on  which  I  have  insisted  all  this 
evening.  And,  fourthly,  the  error  which 
is  not  to  be  yielded  until  it  is  convinced  of 
its  untruth  by  reason,  must  be  attacked  by 
reason ;  and  so  the  right  and  the  duty  of 
earnest  discussion  is  included  as  a  part 
of  tolerance.  And,  fifthly,  the  tolerance 
which  is  patient  toward  what  it  counts 
honest  error,  is  utterly  impatient  toward 
dishonesty,  toward  hypocrisy,  toward  self- 
conceit,  toward  cant,  whether  it  be  on  the 
side  of  what  the  honest  man  thinks  to  be 
error,  or  of  that  which  he  thinks  to  be  true. 
There  is  a  moral  intolerance  which  must  go 
with  intellectual  tolerance  to  give  it  vigor. 


First  Lecture.  5/ 

Cordial,  discriminating,  positive,  out- 
spoken, conscientious :  all  these  things  the 
perfect  tolerance  must  be ;  all  these  things 
it  is  bound  to  be  by  its  very  definition. 

Keeping  these  qualities,  which  must  be- 
long to  the  perfect  tolerance,  clearly  in  our 
minds,  are  there  not  certain  things  which 
we  may  say  with  regard  to  the  way  in 
which  that  perfect  tolerance  will  some  day 
or  other  come  to  be  the  established  condi- 
tion and  the  ruling  power  of  the  world? 

1.  I  have  already  said,  at  most  abundant 
length,  that  it  cannot  come  about  by  mere 
indifference. 

2.  Equally  sure  is  it  that  it  cannot  come 
by  mere  eclecticism.  That  is  the  dream 
that  haunts  some  amiable  minds.  Some  day, 
so  such  minds  fancy,  some  great  peace- 
maker will  pick  out  from  every  system  of 
thought  its  choicest  dogma,  and  setting 
them  together,  will  build  a  dogmatic  home 
where  every  soul  shall  be  completely  satis- 
fied, because  when  it  looks  up  it  will  see 
its  own  chief  article  of  faith  set  in  a  place 


52  Tolerance. 

of  honor  in  the  walls.  It  will  accept  the 
dogmas  of  the  other  souls  because  of  the 
light  which  they  will  get  from  this  of  its, 
and  it  will  cease  to  mourn  for  the  rest  of 
its  cherished  possessions  which  have  no 
place  in  the  new  structure,  because  of  its 
thankfulness  that  this  its  principal  treasure 
has  been  saved. 

Of  all  the  stories  of  eclecticism,  I  think 
that  none  is  more  interesting  than  that 
of  the  great  Akbar,  the  mighty  Mogul 
Emperor,  him  whom  Max  Miiller  calls 
"  the  first  student  of  comparative  reli- 
gions." He  lived  and  died  almost  three 
centuries  ago ;  but  his  story  reads  like  a 
record  of  life  in  one  of  the  great  cities  of 
to-day.  In  his  palace  at  Agra  he  held  his 
Friday  evenings,  when  Buddhist,  Hindu, 
Mussulman,  Sun-worshipper,  Fire-worship- 
per, Jew,  Jesuit,  and  Sceptic,  all  came  and 
argued,  and  the  great  monarch  sat  and 
stirred  the  waters,  and  gathered  out  of  the 
turmoil  whatever  pearl  was  anywhere  cast 
up  to  the  top.     He  did  not  exactly,  like  a 


First  Lecture.  5^ 

modern  lady  of  society,  invite  a  college 
professor  to  lecture  to  her  friends  upon  the 
Infinite,  in  her  parlor,  on  a  summer's  after- 
noon ;  but  he  hung  a  Brahmin  in  a  basket 
outside  his  chamber  window,  and  bade  him 
thence  discourse  to  him  of  Brahma,  Vishnu, 
Rama,  and  Krishna,  till  the  great  Akbar 
dropped  asleep.  The  result  was  an  eclec- 
tic faith,  a  state  religion,  a  thing  of 
shreds  and  patches,  devised  by  the  inge- 
nious monarch,  enforced  by  his  authority, 
accepted  by  his  obsequious  courtiers,  and 
dropping  to  pieces  and  perishing  as  soon 
as  he  was  dead.  It  was  the  old  first  fatal 
difficulty  of  eclecticism,  that  each  man 
wants  to  make  his  own  selection,  and  no 
man  can  choose  for  others,  but  only  for 
himself 

3.  Nor  is  the  promise  of  the  future  to  be 
found  in  the  idea  that  some  day  one  of  the 
present  forms  of  faith,  one  of  the  present 
conceptions  of  God  and  man  and  life,  shall 
so  overwhelmingly  assert  its  truth  that 
every  other  form  of  faith  shall  come  and 


5^  Tolerance. 

lay  its  claims  before  its  feet  and  ask  to  be 
obliterated  and  absorbed.  Truth  has  not 
anywhere  been  so  monopolized.  And  no 
man  who  delights  in  the  activity  of  the 
human  mind  as  the  first  condition  of  the 
attainment  of  final  truth  by  man,  can  think 
complacently  of  any  period  short  of  the 
perfect  arrival  at  the  goal  of  absolute  cer- 
tainty with  reference  to  all  knowledge, 
when  man  shall  cease  to  wonder  and  cease 
to  inquire,  and  so  pass  out  of  the  possi- 
bility of  error  and  mistake. 

4.  And  yet,  again,  our  hope  cannot  He 
contentedly  in  the  anticipation  of  a  mere 
superficial  unity  of  organization  and  of 
government  which  will  cover  over  and 
make  men  forget  the  differences  of 
thought  and  opinion  which  lie  in  their 
unreconciled  diversity  below.  Great  is 
the  craving  after  unity,  —  so  great,  so 
deep,  so  universal,  that  we  know  it  is  a 
part  of  God's  first  purpose  for  humanity, 
and  never  can  die  out  till  it  has  found 
its  satisfaction.      But  it   is   too  great  and 


First  Lecture.  ^^ 

deep  ever  to  find  its  final  satisfaction 
in  identity  of  organization.  You  cannot 
make  the  unit  to  be  a  unit  by  the  exter- 
nal unity  of  one  hard  shell.  If  the  fruit 
which  you  try  to  enclose  is  alive,  it  will 
burst  your  shell  to  pieces  as  it  grows.  If 
it  be  dead,  your  shell  will  soon  hold  only 
a  dry  and  rattling  remnant,  to  which  it 
can  give  no  life.  No,  the  real  unity  of 
Christendom  is  not  to  be  found  at  last  in 
identity  of  organization,  nor  in  identity  of 
dogma.  Both  of  those  have  been  dreamed 
of,  and  have  failed.  But  in  the  unity  of 
spiritual  consecration  to  a  common  Lord 
—  so  earnestly  sought  by  every  soul  that, 
though  their  apprehension  of  Him  whom 
they  are  seeking  shall  be  as  various  as 
are  the  lights  into  which  a  hundred  jewels 
break  the  self-same  sunlight  —  the  search 
shall  be  so  deep  a  fact,  so  much  the  deep- 
est fact  in  every  soul,  that  all  the  souls 
shall  be  one  with  each  other  in  virtue  of 
that  simple  fact,  in  virtue  of  that  com- 
mon  reaching  after  Christ,  that  common 


55  Tolerance. 

earnestness  of  loyalty  to  what  they  know 
of  Him.  There  is  the  only  unity  that 
is  thoroughly  worthy  cither  of  God  or 
man. 

That  seems  to  many  men,  I  know,  to  be 
dim  and  vague.  It  is  a  terrible  and  sad 
sign  of  how  far  our  Christianity  is  from 
its  perfection  that  now,  after  these  centu- 
ries of  its  sway,  the  central  key  and  secret 
of  its  power  should  seem  dim  and  vague 
to  men.  But  the  hope  of  the  future, 
the  certainty  of  the  future,  is  that  the  per- 
sonality of  Christ,  as  holding  the  loyalty 
and  love  of  all  the  varying  orders  of 
mankind,  and  making  them  one  in  their 
common  affection  and  obedience  to  Him, 
is  to  become  more  and  more  real  with 
every  Christian  generation,  till  it  is  at  last 
for  all  mankind,  as  it  is  now  for  multi- 
tudes of  earnest  souls,  the  reallest  thing  in 
all  the  world.  Organizations  and  dogmas 
are  of  aid  as  they  help  to  that.  When 
that  shall  come,  in  the  degree  in  which 
that  shall  have  come  in  any  age,  tolerance 


First  Lecture.  ^7 

will  fill  that  age  as  it  at  last  must  fill  the 
world  with  its  great,  active,  thoughtful, 
stimulating,  sympathetic  peace. 

It  must  follow  from  all  this  that  toler- 
ance is  to  come  about,  not  by  any  trans- 
action, not  by  compacts  and  bargains,  not 
by  deliberate  concession  and  compromise, 
but  by  the  rising  flood  of  life.  Its  hope 
lies  in  the  advancing  spirituality  of  man. 
He  who  hopes  for  it,  let  him  hope  for  it 
thus  profoundly.  He  who  fears  it,  let 
him  take  comfort  in  the  assurance  that  it 
can  never  come  except  with  such  a  deeper 
occupation  of  the  life  of  man  by  God  as 
shall  rob  it  of  all  the  dangers  which  he 
fears. 

I  turn  to  you,  the  students  of  theology, 
of  God,  of  science,  and  of  human  life, 
—  the  future  ministers  of  Christ.  You 
must  be  men,  you  must  be  ministers,  of 
tolerance.  But  the  true  way  in  which  you 
can  be  that  is  to  forget  tolerance  and  be 
ever  more  and  more  completely  men  of 
truth  and  men    of  Christ.     So   you  must 


5^  Tolerance. 

be  led  on  into  that  only  worthy  tolerance 
which,  as  I  have  tried  to  show  to-night, 
and  as  I  should  like  to  say  once  more  be- 
fore I  close,  consists  of  the  love  of  truth 
and  the  love  of  man  harmonized  and  in- 
cluded in  the  love  of  God. 


SECOND    LECTURE. 


Gentlemen  : 

The  second  of  the  great  Mogul  emper- 
ors, the  wise  and  energetic  Jahangir,  used 
to  have  a  chain  hung  down  from  his  cita- 
del to  the  ground,  communicating  with  a 
cluster  of  golden  bells  in  his  own  chamber, 
so  that  every  suitor  might  apprise  the 
monarch  of  his  demand  for  justice  with- 
out the  intervention  of  the  courtiers.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know  what  the 
courtiers  thought  of  such  an  apparatus. 
No  doubt  there  were  some  to  whom  it 
was  a  great  offence.  Full  of  the  thought 
of  themselves,  it  seemed  an  insult  and  im- 
pertinence that  any  of  his  people  should 
presume  to  approach  their  lord  except 
through   them.      There   must   have   been 


6o  Tolerance. 

other  more  generous  natures  who  rejoiced 
that,  however  irregularly,  the  direct  and 
fundamental  relation  between  the  monarch 
and  his  people  should  be  recognized,  and 
that  the  meanest  man  in  all  the  kingdom 
might  send  his  complaint  or  his  petition 
direct  to  the  king's  ear.  Doubtless  also 
there  were  those  in  whose  breasts  the 
sight  of  the  hanging  chain  wakened  self- 
questionings.  Why  was  it  that  such  an 
apparatus  was  required?  Why  should 
not  these  petitioners  send  their  petitions 
through  the  appointed  channels?  Had 
the  courtiers  perhaps  made  their  courtier- 
ship  too  narrow  and  unsympathetic  to  be 
the  medium  of  interpretation  between  the 
people  and  their  lord? 

All  three  of  these  suggestions  come 
into  the  mind  of  the  Christian  Church 
when  it  sees  human  souls,  apart  from  her 
ordinances  and  institutions,  seeking  the 
ear  and  heart  of  God.  The  first  thought 
springs  up  in  the  baser  portion  of  the 
Church's  heart;  the   other   two  are   good 


Second  Lecture.  6i 

and  healthy.  One  of  them  is  thankful 
that,  valuable  as  the  Church  is  to  the  soul 
and  to  the  world,  every  son  of  God  has 
still  open  to  him  that  power  of  direct 
appeal  and  personal  approach  which  the 
Church  is  meant  to  stimulate  and  help,  but 
never  to  deny  or  supersede.  The  other 
thought  keeps  the  Church  full  of  wakeful- 
ness and  watchfulness,  ever  on  the  alert  to 
see  how  she  can  make  herself  less  un- 
worthy of  her  mission,  a  truer  and  broader 
minister  of  God  to  man.  Both  together 
preserve  in  the  Church  the  spirit  of 
tolerance. 

May  I  not,  as  I  begin  to  speak  this 
evening  to  you,  students  of  divinity, 
men  who  very  soon  will  make  a  part  of 
the  Church's  ministry,  pause  for  a  mo- 
ment with  a  word  of  exhortation,  and  beg 
you  never,  in  your  thankfulness  for  all 
the  Church's  blessed  richness,  to  forget  the 
personal  belonging  of  the  child  to  the 
Father,  of  the  human  soul  to  God,  which 
lies  behind  all  that  the  Church  can  be  or 


62  Tolerance. 

do.  There  will  come  times  when  in  your 
own  deepest  need  or  loftiest  exaltation  you 
will  forget  that  you  are  ministers,  and 
simply  know  yourseh^es  as  men,  children 
of  God.  Then  you  will  come  directly  to 
Him  heart  to  heart.  There  are  times 
when  the  courtiers  themselves,  leaving  the 
whole  courtly  ceremonial  aside,  will  touch 
the  chain  and  ring  the  golden  bells.  Let 
such  moments  interpret  to  you  the  simple, 
personal,  unchurchly  religious  impulses 
which  make  up  so  much  of  the  world's 
religion.  Let  such  moments  at  once  fill 
you  with  a  deep  sense  of  the  reality  and 
value  of  many  a  religious  experience  of 
which  the  Church  in  her  institutional  life 
takes  no  account,  and  let  it  also  make  you 
anxious  that  the  Church  should  be  so  simple 
and  true  and  human,  so  full  of  love  and 
faithfulness  to  human  nature,  that  more 
and  more  of  the  religious  life  of  man  may 
find  its  ministry  and  help  in  her.  The 
channel  which  is  not  wide  enough  to  con- 
tain the  full  torrent  of  the  spring-time  is 


Second  Lecture.  6^ 

thankful  that  the  drops  she  cannot  hold 
find  wayward  courses  of  their  own  down 
to  the  sea;  and  at  the  same  time  she 
makes  herself  wider  and  wider,  that  more 
and  more  of  the  water  may  find  way 
through  her. 

And  now  there  are  several  subjects  sug- 
gested by  what  I  said  the  other  evening 
of  which  I  should  like  to  speak  to  you 
to-night  with  more  or  less  of  order  and 
coherence.  I  said  then,  you  remember, 
that  tolerance,  so  far  from  being  a  thing 
of  loose  beliefs  and  feeble  earnestness,  had 
its  real  life  in  certain  convictions  and  pro- 
found piety.  If  this  be  so,  then  it  is  surely 
true  that  the  Church,  which  is  the  home  of 
clear  faith  and  spiritual  consecration,  ought 
to  be  the  citadel  of  tolerance  ;  and  we,  mem- 
bers and  ministers  of  the  Church,  ought 
to  look  forward  to  the  time  when,  setting 
distinctly  before  the  world  the  true  nature 
of  this  grace,  she  shall  attract  men  by  its 
beauty  and  win  men  to  it  and  to  herself 

But    now    it   is   time   for    us    to   note  a 


64  Tolerance. 

distinction  which  has  no  doubt  occurred  to 
a  good  many  of  your  minds  while  I  have 
spoken.  When  we  speak  of  tolerance,  we 
may  have  in  our  minds  either  one  of  two 
classes  of  things  and  thoughts  toward 
w^hich  the  tolerant  disposition  is  de- 
manded ;  and  wc  may  easily  be  led  to 
draw  a  line  between  them,  and  say: 
"  Toward  one  class  tolerance  is  good ; 
but  toward  the  other  class,  how  is  toler- 
ance possible?"  There  is  the  tolerance 
toward  other  forms  of  good  thinking  and 
good  working  than  our  own ;  and  there  is 
the  tolerance  toward  forms  of  working  and 
thinking  which  we  do  not  at  all  hold  to  be 
good,  but  totally  and  irremediably  bad. 

The  first  thing  which  we  can  say  with 
regard  to  that  distinction  is,  that  it  is  one 
of  which  we  never  ought  to  think  that  we 
can  be  absolutely  sure  at  first  sight.  Our 
sense  of  the  value  of  our  way  of  working, 
if  it  is  very  deep,  — -  as  it  ought  to  be,  in 
order  to  make  our  work  vital  and  enthusi- 
astic,—  is  almost  sure  to  blur  the  distinc- 


Second  Lecture.  65 

tion  between  the  work  and  the  way  of 
doing  it,  to  make  the  color  seem  part  of 
the  substance,  to  make  the  man  who  is 
doing  the  same  work  in  another  way  ap- 
pear to  be  doing  another  work.  Nowhere 
does  a  man  need  more  clearness  of  mind 
and  soul  than  here.  The  only  thing  that 
can  keep  him  absolutely  true  is  such  a 
pure  value  for  the  thing  itself,  such  a 
desire  and  craving  for  the  success  of  the 
essential  work,  as  shall  compel  it  always 
to  stand  out  before  the  thought  sharp  and 
distinguishable  from  all  the  ways  in  which 
the  work  is  being  done. 

But  granting  that  this  distinction  can 
be  kept,  then  the  objects  for  our  tolerance 
fall  into  the  two  classes  of  which  I  spoke. 
First,  there  are  the  opinions  which  we 
recognize  as  probably  or  possibly  present- 
ing other  sides  of  truth  than  ours.  Here 
everything  ought  to  be  clear  and  easy,  if 
we  understand  human  nature.  God  has 
made  man  with  two  powers  in  relation  to 
the  laying  hold  on  truth:  one  of  these 
5 


66  Tolerance. 

powers  is  general,  the  other  special.  By 
one  ,of  them  man  values  truth  in  its  es- 
sence, laying  hold  upon  the  fundamental 
difference  between  truth  and  falsehood ; 
by  the  other,  expressing  itself  in  his  pecu- 
liar faculties  and  character,  he  seizes  upon 
particular  forms  or  kinds  of  truth  and 
makes  them  distinctively  his  own.  The 
true  student  is  aware  of  both  of  these 
powers,  and  never  lets  them  lose  them- 
selves in  one  another.  "  I  love  truth,"  he 
says,  sweeping  into  the  range  of  his  affec- 
tion all  the  unknown  truth  that  every  spe- 
cial scholar  is  discovering  in  the  most 
distant  regions  of  investigation.  What  the 
astronomer  is  seeing  in  the  skies,  and  the 
mathematician  in  the  mystery  of  form  and 
number,  and  the  metaphysician  in  the  soul 
of  man,  —  all  these  the  truth-lover  claims 
for  his  own  as  he  stands  at  the  heart  of 
things  and  says,  "  I  love  truth."  And  yet 
this  does  not  hinder  him  from  putting 
forth  his  special  faculty  and  comprehend- 
ing, as  we  say,  one  special  kind  of  truth, 


Second  Lecture.  6j 

and   enthusiastically   declaring,    "  This   is 
my  truth."     This  double  hold  on  truth  is 
all-important.     If  the  first  element  is  lost, 
the  scholar  narrows  to  a  meagre  special- 
ist ;   if  the  second  element  grows  weak,  he 
fades  into   a  vague  and  abstract  theorist. 
He  must  have  both.     But  he  is  very  sure 
not  to  have  both ;   he  is  very  sure  to  lose 
the    larger   hold    on  truth   in   its  essence, 
—  truth  as  truth,  —  unless  he  knows,  and 
is  rejoiced   to   know,  that  other  men  are 
holding  other  truths  than  his ;  and  what 
we  are  used  to   call   other  sides  of  truth 
are  really  other  truths.     It  is  very  like  our 
conception  of  the  world  we  live  in.     I  love 
my  country,  and  I  love  the  whole  earth; 
but  my  love  for  the  total  earth  would  fade 
and  grow  dim  if  I  did  not  realize  and  re- 
joice that  men  with  my  humanity  were  liv- 
ing at  the  Tropics  and  at  Baffin's  Bay.     It 
is  in  virtue  of  my  being  at  once  an  Ameri- 
can and  a  man  that  my  intelligence  and  my 
love  can  take  possession  of  the  world. 
Therefore  no  man  is  truly  tolerant  who 


68  Tolerance. 

does  not  merely  consent,  but  rejoice  that 
other  men  think  differently  from  himself 
regarding  those  subjects  of  thought  which 
arc  capable  of  various  apprehension.  I 
have  heard  some  of  our  bishops  declare 
with  thankfulness  and  pride  that  there  was 
no  difference  of  opinion  in  their  dioceses ; 
that  all  the  clergy  (I  suppose  they  would 
hardly  undertake  to  answer  for  all  the  laity 
there)  thought  alike.  I  know  some  minis- 
ters who  want  all  their  parishioners  to  think 
after  their  fashion,  and  are  troubled  when 
any  of  their  people  show  signs  of  thinking 
for  themselves  and  holding  ideas  which  the 
minister  does  not  hold.  Thank  God,  the 
human  nature  is  too  vital,  especially  when  it 
is  inspired  with  such  a  vital  force  as  Chris- 
tian faith,  to  yield  itself  to  such  unworthy 
slavery.  Many  and  many  is  the  minister 
who,  when  his  people  have  first  gone  forth, 
full  of  the  fire  which  God  has  sent  to  them 
through  him,  to  think  of  God  as  he  taught 
them  to  think  of  Him,  has  by  and  by 
become  a  learner  from  his  people's  lives, 


Second  Lecture.  6g 

and  found  in  their  experience  how  good  it 
is  that  the  divine  Hght  shines  on  many 
mirrors  and  completes  its  revelation  in  no 
single  soul ! 

Of  the  other  class  of  things  of  which  I 
spoke,  the  case  is  different.  I  am  not  called 
upon,  nay,  I  am  not  at  liberty,  to  rejoice 
in  the  existence  of  any  opinion  which  I 
know  to  be  untrue.  I  am  not  called  upon, 
nay,  I  have  no  right,  to  be  thankful  that  my 
neighbor  is  an  atheist,  and  denies  the  truth 
of  God's  being,  which  is  to  me  the  glory 
and  the  inspiration  of  all  life.  Tolerance 
toward  him  means  something  different 
from  a  glad  sense  that  he  fills  out  my  par- 
tial truth  with  something  which  it  lacked. 
Tolerance  toward  him  means  two  things. 
It  means,  first,  a  cordial  and  thankful  rec- 
ognition of  all  the  good  personal  charac- 
ter which  there  is  in  him,  including  most 
carefully  the  frankness  and  honesty  which 
makes  him  clearly  face  and  openly  declare 
this  very  atheism  which  distresses  and 
offends  my  soul.     It  means,  in  the  second 


yo  Tolerance. 

place,  the  full  acceptance  of  the  idea  that 
it  is  only  by  the  persuasion  of  reason  that 
this  atheism  can  be  legitimately  attacked 
and  overthrown.  Where  these  two  ele- 
ments, personal  respect  and  confidence  in 
reason  only  as  the  means  of  conversion, 
are  present,  tolerance  is  perfect.  Then  the 
strong  platform  is  built  on  which  you  can 
meet  your  atheist  or  unbeliever  and  wage 
strong  warfare  for  the  truth  which  you 
believe.  Upon  that  platform  let  no  earn- 
estness be  spared.  One  of  the  worst  things 
about  intolerance  is  that  its  puts  an  end  to 
manly  controversy.  Calvin  cannot  argue 
with  Servetus  when  he  is  putting  the  fire 
to  the  fuel  which  surrounds  his  victim  at 
the  stake.  Laud  cannot  demonstrate  epis- 
copacy to  the  Puritans  whom  he  despises 
and  believes  that  it  is  right  to  put  down 
by  force.  The  only  atmosphere  in  which 
strong,  manly  controversy,  which  is  one  of 
the  noblest  activities  on  earth,  can  truly  live 
and  flourish,  is  the  atmosphere  of  toler- 
ance, —  an  atmosphere  whose  elements  are 


/ 


Second  Lecture.  yi 

respect  for  personal  qualities  and  trust  in 
the  power  of  truth. 

All  this  applies  especially  to  that  which 
often  seems  to  be  the  hardest  kind  of  toler- 
ance, which  is  the  tolerance  of  intolerance. 
Very  often  this  is  the  last  infirmity  of  libe- 
ral minds.  After  you  have  conquered  or 
outgrown  all  your  unwillingness  that  men 
should  think  in  enterprising  and  dangerous 
ways,  you  turn  and  look  in  on  yourself, 
only  to  find  your  soul  full  of  uncharitable 
thoughts  towards  men  who  still  are  keep- 
ing the  reluctance  which  you  used  to  feel. 
Until  you  get  rid  of  those  thoughts  you  are 
not  fully  tolerant.  It  is  possible  to  get  rid 
of  them.  Towards  the  narrow-minded  bigot 
both  of  the  dispositions  of  which  I  spoke 
may  come  into  full  play.  You  may  feel  in 
his  bigotry  the  high  quality  of  personal  sin- 
cerity, and  you  may  cordially  own  that  not 
even  so  unpleasant  a  usurper  as  his  bigotry 
must  be  attacked  with  any  other  artillery 
but  reason.  So  you  may  be  tolerant  even 
of  intolerance,  —  which  is  very  hard. 


y2  Tolerance. 

2.  I  pass  on,  next,  to  speak  of  the  way  in 
which  the  question  of  tolerance  is  related 
to  the  declared  and  visible  fellowships  of 
men.  It  may  be  that  what  I  have  said 
thus  far  has  seemed  too  large.  Intoler- 
ance, as  it  exists  to-day,  does  not,  con- 
sciously and  declaredly,  at  least,  seek  to 
banish  from  existence  those  with  whom  it 
disagrees.  It  says  only  that  it  cannot  in- 
clude them  in  the  group  of  privileged 
men,  in  the  community,  the  society,  the 
church  which  holds  only  those  who  think 
aright.  Let  us  look  at  this  for  a  few 
moments. 

We  must  remember,  then,  that  there  is 
more  than  one  fellowship  which  must  be 
taken  into  account  in  estimating  a  man's 
relation  to  his  fellow-men.  Every  true 
Churchman,  —  that  is,  every  man  who  truly 
values  his  place  in  the  Christian  Church,  — 
it  seems  to  me,  must  think  of  himself  as 
standing  in  the  midst  of  four  concentric 
circles.  He  is  the  centre  of  them  all. 
They  represent  the  different  groups  of  his 


Second  Lecture.  75 

fellovv-men  with  whom  he  has  to  do.  They 
sweep  in  widening  circumference  around  the 
spot  of  earth  on  which  he  stands,  and  make 
the  different  horizons  of  his  hfe.  What 
are  they?  Outermost  of  all,  there  is  the 
broad  circle  of  humanity.  All  men,  simply 
as  men,  are  something  to  this  man.  It  is 
the  consciousness  "  Homo  sum,"  the  con- 
sciousness which  the  Latin  poet  crowded 
into  his  immortal  line,  which  fills  this  circle 
with  vitality.  Next  within  this  lies  the 
circle  of  religion,  —  smaller  than  the  other, 
because  all  men  are  not  religious,  but  large 
enough  to  include  all  those  of  every  name, 
of  every  creed,  who  count  their  life  the  sub- 
ject and  the  care  of  a  Divine  life  which  is 
their  king.  Next  within  this  lies  the  circle 
of  Christianity,  including  all  those  who, 
under  any  conception  of  Him  and  of  their 
duty  toward  Him,  honestly  own  for  their 
Master  Jesus  Christ.  And  then,  inmost  of 
all,  there  is  the  circle  of  the  man's  own 
peculiar  Church,  the  group  of  those  whose 
thought  and  worship  is  in  general  identical 


y4  Tolerance. 

with  his  who  stands  in  the  centre  and  feels 
all  these  four  circles  surrounding  him. 

Can  you  not  seem  to  see  him  standing 
there  in  the  midst  of  these  circumferences? 
And  the  first  thing  of  importance  is  that 
each  one  of  the  four  should  be  real  to 
their  central  man,  and  never  wholly  lost 
out  of  his  consciousness.  It  will  not  do 
for  either  of  them  to  become  unreal ;  all 
the  others  will  surely  suffer  if  it  does.  To 
the  true  disciple,  to  the  real  member  of  the 
Church  of  Christ,  it  must  still  be  a  fact 
of  which  he  is  aware,  and  which  he  thinks 
most  important,  that  he  belongs  with  other 
Christians  who  think  of  Christ  differently 
from  himself,  and  with  religious  men  who 
never  heard  of  Christ,  and  with  all  men 
simply  in  virtue  of  their  being  men, 
whether  they  are  religious  men  or  not. 

Of  course  the  relationships  with  all  these 
groups  are  different.  The  four  radii  of  the 
four  circles  vary  very  much  in  length. 
The  inmost  circle  nestles  to  its  centre  with 
a  warmth  of  sympathy  which  the  others 


Second  Lecture.  y^ 

do  not  know.  That  is  all  right.  But  the 
important  point  is  that  they  all  are  real. 
There  come  times  in  the  life  of  the  mem- 
ber of  Christ's  Church  when  he  needs  each 
one  of  these  four  horizons  of  life, — times 
when  the  close  foreground  of  completest 
sympathy  is  what  his  soul  requires;  times 
when  the  middle  distance  of  a  more  gen- 
eral unity  of  faith,  a  unity  with  those  who 
own  and  love  the  same  Christ  differently 
conceived,  or  with  those  whose  souls  are 
touched  with  the  same  great  general  aspi- 
rations in  some  pagan  faith,  enlarges  his 
view  of  the  presence  of  God  in  the  world; 
still  other  times,  when  nothing  short 
of  the  great  mountain-tops  of  humanity 
which  stand  around  all  special  human  liv- 
ing and  thinking  will  satisfy  his  gaze. 

I  value  very  much  this  doctrine  of  the 
concentric  circles,  this  doctrine  of  the  four 
horizons,  because  I  think  that  in  forgetful- 
ness  of  it  lies  the  secret  of  many  of  the 
corruptions  of  the  Church's  faith  and  life. 
The  "  unity  of  faith !  "  we  say.     Of  course 


j6  Tolerance. 

those  words  have  their  most  close  and 
sacred  meaning,  as  they  express  the  deep 
sympathy  of  men  who  in  almost  all  points 
of  belief  see  eye  to  eye,  and  perfectly 
agree,  —  men  who  delight  in  the  common 
service  of  a  Master  whom  they  understand 
alike.  But  that  inmost  unity  of  faith  grows 
weak  and  narrow  unless  the  men  who  feel 
it  feel  also  constantly  the  unities  of  faith 
which  lie  beyond.  I  cannot  live  truly  with 
the  men  of  my  own  Church  unless  I  also 
have  a  consciousness  of  common  life  with 
all  Christian  believers,  with  all  religious 
men,  with  all  mankind. 

And  then  we  note  another  thing:  not 
merely  are  these  four  circles  all  real  to  the 
true  Churchman,  —  the  circles  of  human- 
ity, of  religion,  of  Christianity,  and  of  his 
Church ;  they  also  feel  each  other,  and  the 
inner  and  smaller  are  always  reaching  out- 
ward to  the  larger.  The  Churchman  as  he 
lives  in  all  of  them  becomes  aware  that, 
actually  distinct  as  they  are  now,  they  are 
ideally  and  essentially  identical  with  one 


Second  Lecture.  yy 

another.  He  feels  a  throb  and  thrill 
through  all  the  system,  which  he  finds  to 
be  the  effort  of  the  smaller  circle  to  em- 
brace the  larger.  Each  smaller  circle  is 
restless  and  discontented  until  it  at  least 
has  touched  the  larger  circumference  of 
which  it  always  is  aware.  The  special 
Church  reaches  out  and  craves  to  enlarge 
itself  until  it  shall  be  able  to  include  within 
itself  all  Christianity.  Christianity  is  anx- 
ious to  claim  all  the  religious  life  of  all  the 
world  for  Christ;  and  true  religion  grows 
more  and  more  anxious  to  declare  that  re- 
ligion is  not  something  foreign  to  human- 
ity, that  it  is  simply  the  fullest  utterance  of 
human  life,  that  all  human  life  which  is  not 
religious  falls  below  itself.  Not  man  with 
religion  is  something  more,  but  man  with- 
out religion  is  something  less,  than  man. 

Most  interesting  is  this  perpetual  out- 
reach, this  throb  and  struggle  of  the 
inner  circles  to  fill  the  outer  circles  with 
themselves.  But  it  touches  our  present 
purpose    only   so  far  as  it   describes   the 


j8  Tolerance. 

relation  between  the  inmost  circle  and  the 
one  that  lies  next  beyond  it,  —  the  circle 
of  the  Church  and  the  circle  of  general 
Christianity.  There  it  touches  directly 
upon  most  important  questions,  —  upon 
questions  which  you,  young  clergymen, 
will  have  to  meet  almost  as  soon  as  you 
find  yourselves  ordained.  The  Church 
horizon,  as  I  said,  is  always  reaching  out 
toward  the  Christian  horizon  and  trying 
to  identify  itself  with  it.  If  it  could  per- 
fectly do  so,  all  would  be  well.  But  there 
is  not  a  Church  in  Christendom  which  can 
do  so  to-day.  There  is  not  a  Church  in 
Christendom  —  not  ours,  nor  any  other  — 
which  is  not  forced  to  own  that  there  are 
men  whom  she  will  freely  acknowledge  to 
be  Christian  men,  whom  yet  she  is  not 
ready  and  fit  to  receive  into  full  commu- 
nion and  membership  with  herself,  into  full 
acceptance  of  her  privileges  and  full  en- 
joyment of  her  influence.  Some  dogma 
doubted,  or  some  dogma  held,  or  some 
peculiarity  of  thought  or  feeling  on  their 


Second  Lecture.  jg 

part,  stands  in  the  way.  Some  excess  or 
some  defect  of  faith  keeps  the  Christian 
outside  the  Christian  Church ! 

Is  it  not  so?  I  can  see  nothing  to  do 
but  frankly  to  face  the  fact  and  own  it. 
A  man  comes  to  you,  who  are  a  minister 
of  our  Church,  and  tells  you  of  his  faith, 
tells  you  how  earnestly  he  loves,  how 
deeply  he  honors,  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
tells  you  how  he  is  trying  to  give  his 
whole  life  up  to  the  Master's  service.  Is 
he  a  Christian?  Of  course  he  is;  you 
cannot  doubt  a  moment.  You  are  sure 
what  the  Lord  would  have  said  if  He  had 
met  him  in  Jerusalem.  But  can  you, 
simply  and  solely  because  he  is  a  Chris- 
tian, throw  wide  the  door  and  bid  him  wel- 
come to  our  Church's  inmost  privileges? 
Are  there  no  tests  of  doctrine,  no  speci- 
fied ways  of  worship,  no  definitions  of 
orthodoxy,  which  lie  within  the  defini- 
tions of  the  absolute  truth,  which  you  must 
apply  before  you  can  bid  that  Christian 
welcome  to  the  Church   and  feel  that  he 


8o  Tolerance. 

and  it  belong  together?  If  there  are, 
then  the  Church  is  not  prepared  to-day 
to  make  herself  identical  with  Christian- 
ity. If  the  chance  to  do  so  were  freely 
given  her,  she  is  not  ready  to  accept  it. 
Therefore  she  is  not  catholic ;  she  is  not 
prepared  to   lay  claim  to  universality. 

And  what  must  be  the  consequence  of 
such  a  state  of  things?  Must  there  not 
be  two  consequences?  The  first  conse- 
quence must  be  a  perpetual  restlessness 
under  her  own  restraint,  a  perpetual  de- 
sire to  make  all  thought  orthodox  which 
is  true,  and  all  action  legitimate  which  is 
really  helpful  to  the  human  soul.  We 
ought  to  be  very  thankful  for  every  such 
disposition  wherever  it  shows  itself  in  our 
Church.  We  ought  to  be  very  glad  when, 
reaching  out  in  either  way,  —  either  back 
into  the  past,  gathering  up  any  disused 
method  which  the  Church  may  have  now 
grown  wise  enough  to  use;  or  forward 
into  the  future,  eagerly  claiming  any  light 
which  free-minded  criticism  and  enlarged 


Second  Lecture.  8i 

knowledge  can  throw  upon  the  pages  of 
the  Bible,  —  the  Church  grows  broader  in 
spirit,  more  ready  to  do  the  work  of  God 
and  to  meet  the  religious  needs  of  man. 

The  other  consequence  must  be  a  cor- 
dial tolerance.  So  long  as  any  Church  is 
aware  that  there  are  Christians  to  whom 
she,  as  she  is  now  constituted,  cannot 
open  her  doors,  she  must  be  more  than 
content  —  she  must  be  thankful  and  re- 
joice —  that  there  are  forms  of  worship 
and  groups  of  believers  in  which  those 
Christians  for  whom  she  has  no  place  may 
find  fellowship  with  one  another  and  feed 
their  souls  with  truth.  While  she  is  ever 
trying  to  make  her  own  embrace  more 
large,  to  bring  herself  into  a  true  iden- 
tity with  the  absolute  Christianity,  she  will 
be  glad  enough  that  in  the  mean  time  the 
souls  for  which  she  has  no  place  are  not 
to  go  unhoused,  that  there  are  other 
Church  homes  than  her  own  in  which 
they  may  live,  that  she  is  not  the  whole 
Church,  that  in  the  largest  and  truest 
6 


82  Tolerance. 

sense  the  Church,  even  to-day,  docs  em- 
brace all  servants  of  Christ  in  their  innu- 
merable divisions.  Such  souls  there  must 
be  so  long  as  there  is  no  Church  in  the 
world  which  is  exactly  coincident  with 
essential  Christianity,  no  Church  which 
makes  the  standards  of  her  membership 
exactly  the  same,  —  not  one  whit  more,  as 
well  as  not  one  whit  less  than  the  standard 
by  which  a  man  would  have  a  right  to 
count  himself  and  to  think  that  Christ 
would  count  him  a  true  servant  of  the 
Lord  of  Christians.  If  there  are  two  cir- 
cles, one  less  than  the  other,  those  who  live 
in  the  space  between  the  two  must  be  ac- 
counted for.  This  is  the  ground  on  which 
the  man  and  the  minister  who  believes 
most  enthusiastically  in  his  own  Church 
may  yet  keep  —  nay,  must  yet  keep  — 
a  true  tolerance  for  other  churches. 

The  great  safeguard  and  assurance  of 
the  tolerant  spirit  in  the  Christian  minister 
then  lies  in  the  clear  distinctness  of  these 
four  horizons  about  the  central  point  on 


Second  Lecture.  8) 

which  he  stands.  He  docs  not  stand  re- 
lated to  them  all  alike;  one  presses  more 
closely  than  another  on  his  life.  But  to 
know  that  he  has  relations  to  them  all,  and 
to  keep  those  relations  distinct  and  true, 
that  is  his  safety.  First,  and  most  cen- 
trally, he  is  a  man  of  his  own  Church. 
Her  doctrines  he  believes,  her  methods  he 
devoutly  uses,  her  history  he  studies.  By 
her  peculiar  genius  his  life  is  colored  and 
inspired.  He  never  dreams  of  anything 
but  loyalty  to  her.  But  he  goes  out  be- 
yond her  in  his  interest  and  study,  and 
tries  sympathetically  to  understand  all  that 
the  Christian  workers  are  doing,  all  that 
the  Christian  thinkers  and  scholars  are  dis- 
covering, in  any  of  the  rich  fields  in  which 
they  work.  He  is  a  Christian,  and  nothing 
done  or  thought  in  the  name  of  Christ  is 
foreign  or  alien  to  him.  Then  he  goes 
out  to  a  still  wider  circle.  All  that  the 
religious  life  of  the  world  before  Christ 
and  aside  from  Christ  has  been  and  has 
accomplished,  is  of  interest   to   this    man 


84  Tolerance. 

standing  in  his  central  Church.  Not  in 
supercilious  pity,  not  in  a  spirit  of  cap- 
tiousness  which  tries  only  to  see  their 
weaknesses  and  faults,  but  with  a  pro- 
found reverence  for  them  all  as  true  reve- 
lations of  his  own  beloved  God,  as  faint 
shinings  through  the  cloud  of  his  own  en- 
lightening Christ,  so  does  the  true  Church- 
man study  the  religions  of  the  ages 
and  of  the  world.  He  reveres  in  them  the 
God  ever  ready  to  show  Himself  to  His 
children,  and  the  soul  of  man  ever  reach- 
ing forth,  blindly,  awkwardly,  stumblingly, 
but  with  an  irrepressible  persistency  to  find 
the  Father.  And  then,  last  of  all,  man,  — 
all  that  he  has  been,  all  that  he  is,  all  that 
he  is  making  of  this  wonderful,  beautiful 
world ;  man  with  his  history,  his  poetry, 
his  art,  his  science ;  man  very  often  in  his 
deepest  godlessness  bearing  most  convinc- 
ing witness  of  God  by  the  way  in  which  he 
shows  his  need  of  Him  —  man  in  his  simple 
manhood  makes  the  largest  circle  which 
surrounds  this  central  life. 


Second  Lecture.  8^ 

Do  you  not  see  how  every  study  in 
which  it  is  possible  for  man  to  engage  may 
be  a  true  part  of  the  minister's  preparation 
for  his  work?  Christianity  in  all  its  forms, 
comparative  religion,  human  life,  the  world 
he  lives  in,  all  these  he  must  know  in  some 
degree,  in  as  great  degree' as  is  in  his  power. 
Is  he  not  the  most  central  man  in  all  the 
world?  Must  he  not  be  inspired  and  filled 
with  devoutness,  vitality,  and  tolerance  as 
he  stands  in  the  midst  of  his  horizons? 

3.  Let  me  pass  to  another  topic.  The 
question  of  tolerance  will  probably  always 
be  connected  with  the  question  of  penalty. 
Not  that  they  are  necessarily  connected ; 
it  is  possible  for  a  man  to  be  intolerant  of 
an  opinion  different  from  his  own,  and  yet 
never  to  feel  that  he  has  a  right  to  assign  a 
penalty  to  the  holding  of  that  opinion,  or 
even  to  want  to  say  what  will  befall  the 
man  who  holds  it.  Penalty  is  the  shadow 
which  condemnation  casts  when  it  shines 
down  smitingly  upon  the  thing  which  it 
condemns.     No  doubt  sometimes  the  con- 


86  Tolerance. 

demnation  may  take  place  in  such  a  clear, 
diffused  light  of  pure  thought  that  it  may 
cast  no  shadow.  The  intolerant  man 
may  be  content  to  say,  "  I  hold  that 
opinion  to  be  wholly  base  and  wrong  and 
mischievous,  and  I  would  put  it  down  even 
by  force  if  I  could,"  and  yet  may  not  be 
tempted  on  to  denounce  punishment  upon 
the  man  who  believes  that  opinion  to  be 
true.  I  do  not  doubt  that  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  such  intolerance  as  that.  Many 
people  are  ready  to  believe  that  with  the 
passing  away  of  the  use  of  axe  and  fagot 
in  religious  persecution  all  pronouncing  of 
penalty  in  religious  differences  has  disap- 
peared. I  wish  that  it  were  so.  The  evil 
of  intolerance  would  be  vastly  less  if  it 
simply  denounced  and  upbraided  the  opin- 
ion with  which  it  disagreed,  and  did  not  go 
farther,  and  condemn  it  to  a  punishment, 
the  fear  of  which  once  attached  to  any 
opinion  is  a  most  serious  obstacle  to  the 
discovery  of  the  degree  of  truth  which 
that  opinion  may  contain. 


Second  Lecture.  8y 

"  But,"  people  say,  "  how  is  this  pos- 
sible? Now  that  we  cannot  burn  our 
heretics,  and  now  that  they  do  not  mind 
our  excommunications,  how  can  there  be 
such  a  thing  as  persecution  any  more?" 
I  answer,  "  If  it  be  possible  to  keep  alive 
the  idea  —  if  in  some  of  her  teachings  the 
Church  does  keep  alive  the  idea — that 
wrong  opinions  about  God  and  Christ  and 
salvation  are  not  merely  to  show  their 
influence  in  hampered  and  harmed  lives, 
but  are  also  to  be  definitely  punished  by 
God  as  wickedness,  then  the  most  terri- 
ble form  of  persecution  is  still  possible." 
People  used  to  shut  out  a  certain  doctrine 
from  the  reach  of  fair  inquiry  by  decreeing 
that  whoever  came  to  believe  that  doctrine 
should  be  stretched  upon  the  rack,  and 
then  be  led  through  the  hooting  streets  in 
a  disgraceful  dress,  and  at  last  burned  with 
fire  in  the  public  square.  What  terror  had 
a  penalty  like  that  compared  with  the 
terror  which  belongs  to  this  other  threat, 
which    declares    or   implies   that   he   who 


88  Tolerance. 

believes  this  or  disbelieves  that  shall  per- 
ish everlastingly?  Can  such  a  declaration 
still  let  the  soul  be  free  to  seek  for  truth? 
Must  it  not  make  very  difficult,  if  not  im- 
possible, that  search  after  the  truth  mixed 
and  hidden  in  the  error  which  ought  to  be 
our  strongest  desire  when  wc  deal  with 
things  which  we  esteem  erroneous? 

I  cannot  doubt  that  the  present  confused 
and  rebellious  condition  of  men's  minds 
with  regard  to  the  punishments  of  the 
future  life  comes  in  part,  and  in  large  part, 
from  the  way  in  which  punishment  in  all 
ages  of  the  Church  has  been  denounced 
upon  speculative  opinions  and  earnest  con- 
victions. Bidden  to  believe  that  souls 
would  be  punished  for  wrong-thinking, 
people  have  come  to  doubt  whether  souls 
would  be  punished  for  anything  at  all. 
The  only  possibility  of  any  light  upon  the 
darkness,  any  order  in  the  confusion,  must 
lie  in  the  clear  and  unqualified  assertion 
that  such  as  God  is  can  punish  such  as 
men  are  for  nothing  except   wickedness. 


Second  Lecture.  8g 

and  that  honestly  mistaken  opinions  are 
not  wicked.  How  a  clear  assertion  of  such 
a  simple  truth  as  that  cuts  the  knot  of 
sophistry  at  once ;  how  it  makes  the  whole 
system  of  persecution  for  opinion's  sake 
appear  impossible  !  It  would  have  seemed 
as  if  that  simple  truth  were  quite  self- 
evident.  But  it  is  not.  The  whole  long, 
awful  history  of  persecution  and  torture 
for  opinion's  sake  proves  that  it  is  not. 
A  multitude  of  men  to-day  have  aban- 
doned the  idea  of  persecuting  their  breth- 
ren for  their  opinions,  only  because  they 
either,  on  the  one  hand,  have  seen  the 
hopelessness  and  uselessness  of  it,  or  else, 
upon  the  other  hand,  have  been  willing 
to  leave  the  punishment  of  the  errorist  to 
God.  That  sort  of  tolerance  is  superficial 
and  unstable.  The  only  ground  for  us  to 
take  is  simply  the  broad  ground  that  error 
is  not  punishable  at  all.  Error  is  not 
guilt.  The  guilt  of  error  is  the  fallacy  and 
fiction  which  has  haunted  good  men's 
minds.     It  has  not  always  stood  out  plain 


po  Tolerance. 

and  clear;  such  fictions  seldom  do.  It 
has  been  mixed  with  thoughts  of  the  mis- 
chievousness  of  error,  and  with  suspicions 
of  the  maliciousness  of  error;  but  always 
lying  in  behind,  in  the  centre  of  the  im- 
pulse which  made  man  persecute  his 
brother  man  for  wdiat  he  thought,  there 
has  been  the  idea  that  error  was  guilt. 
We  must  get  rid  of  that  entirely.  Error 
is  not  like  guilt;  error  is  like  disease. 
Behind  disease  there  may  lie  guilt  as  a 
cause,  —  the  man  may  have  been  wicked, 
and  so  made  himself  sick ;  and  so  a  man 
may  have  been  reckless,  defiant,  sophisti- 
cal, selfish,  wicked  in  many  ways,  and  so 
have  plunged  himself  into  error.  But  he 
may  have  fallen  into  error  without  any 
such  wickedness ;  and  even  if  his  error 
be  the  fruit  of  wickedness,  it  is  in  the 
wickedness,  the  moral  wrong,  and  not  in 
the  error  which  has  proceeded  from  it, 
that  the  guilt  lies. 

Guilt  could  be  inseparably  attached  to 
error  only  on   the  assumption   that  there 


Second  Lecture.  gi 

was  on  earth  some  revelation  of  God's 
truth  so  absohitely  sure  and  clear  that  no 
honest  man  could  possibly  mistake  it,  —  so 
sure  and  clear  that  any  man  who  mistook 
it  must  necessarily  be  wanton  and  obsti- 
nate and  disobedient;  and  such  a  revela- 
tion certainly  does  not  exist,  and  never  has 
existed  on  the  earth. 

The  most  striking  indications,  to  my 
mind,  that  error  is  not  guilt,  and  does  not 
properly  call  forth  those  emotions  which 
only  guilt  ought  to  produce,  lies  in  the 
way  in  which  many  opponents  of  error 
feel  called  on  to  ascribe  base  motives  to 
the  men  who  hold  it.  They  have  to  turn 
error  into  moral  wrong  before  they  can 
abuse  it  as  only  moral  wrong  deserves  to 
be  abused.  They  are  like  the  Inquisitors 
of  old,  who  when  they  led  their  victims  to 
the  stake,  dressed  them  in  grotesque  and 
horrid  garments  that  the  populace  along 
the  street  might  forget  that  they  were 
men,  and  hoot  at  them  with  free  voices  and 
consciences  as  if  they  were  fiends.     When 


g2  Tolerance. 

a  controversialist,  arguing  against  a  certain 
doctrine  which  he  thinks  all  wrong,  charges 
its  upholders  with  "  the  subtlety  of  the 
adulterer  and  the  cold-blooded  cruelty  of 
the  assassin,"  have  we  not  a  clear  token 
of  misgiving ;  have  we  not  a  sign  that  he 
himself  believes  that  not  in  pure  error,  but 
only  in  malignant  dispositions  found  or 
feigned  in  errorists,  is  their  real  guilt  or 
the  real  ground  of  moral  reprobation  of 
their  thinking? 

Once  get  rid  of  the  whole  notion  that 
error  is  in  itself  a  guilty  thing,  and  two 
good  results  must  follow,  —  first,  moral  in- 
dignation, called  back  from  the  false  scent 
on  which  it  has  been  wasting  itself,  will 
have  its  time  and  strength  to  give  to  those 
things  which  are  really  worthy  of  its  hatred. 
Again  and  again  in  history  the  Church, 
pursuing  error  with  her  anathemas,  has  for- 
gotten to  denounce  cruelty,  hypocrisy,  and 
corruption,  which  were  flagrant  in  her 
very  bosom.  Blame  given  to  the  blame- 
less makes  us  very  often  most  lenient  to 


Second  Lecture.  g} 

the  blameworthy.  Insincerity  (whether  it 
profess  to  hold  what  we  think  is  false  or 
what  we  think  is  true),  cant,  selfishness, 
deception  of  one's  self  or  of  other  people, 
cruelty,  prejudice,  —  these  are  the  things 
with  which  the  Church  ought  to  be  a  great 
deal  more  angry  than  she  is.  The  anger 
which  she  is  ready  to  expend  upon  the 
misbeliever  ought  to  be  poured  out  on 
these. 

And,  again,  when  the  denouncing  of 
penalties  on  wrong  belief  shall  be  done 
with,  then  the  calm  portrayal  of  the  con- 
sequences of  wrong  belief  shall  have  a 
better  chance.  To  tell  an  honest  un- 
believer that  God  will  punish  him  for  not 
believing  that  which  his  mind  can  see  no 
sufficient  reason  for  accepting,  —  that,  if 
he  is  a  real  man,  only  fixes  him  more 
certainly  in  unbelief.  To  point  out  to 
him  how  his  unbelief  is  shutting  him  out 
of  great  regions  of  joy  and  growth,  and 
robbing  his  nature  and  separating  him 
from   God,  —  that   is   legitimate   enough. 


g4  Tolerance. 

It  cannot  make  him  believe,  —  only  posi- 
tive evidence  ought  to  do  that,  —  but  it 
can  set  him  to  a  more  serious  examination 
of  evidence,  and  take  away  from  the  truth 
that  air  of  unlikelihood  which  is  the  atmos- 
phere in  which  so  many  of  the  wanderers 
go  astray. 

In  all  our  thinking  and  speaking  we  are 
to  stand  guard  over  the  purity  of  ideas. 
And  the  wrong  use,  the  wrong  application, 
of  an  idea  violates  and  vitiates  its  purity; 
so  that  when  it  comes  back  to  its  true 
application,  it  works  feebly  or  works 
falsely.  It  is  as  if  you  whittled  your  fire- 
wood with  the  surgeon's  knife ;  when  the 
next  delicate  operation  comes,  the  fine- 
ness and  the  sharpness  are  not  there. 
You  love  an  unlovely  nature,  and  your 
very  power  of  love  grows  coarse ;  w-hen 
the  true  loveliness  stands  up  before  you, 
your  love  is  coarse  and  lustful.  You  ad- 
mire baseness,  and  you  have  nothing  but 
a  debased  admiration  to  give  to  nobleness. 
You  hate  a  troublesome  truth,   and   it  is 


Second  Lecture.  g^ 

only  a  weak  and  peevish  dislike,  not  a 
generous  indignation,  which  you  have  to 
bestow  upon  a  flagrant  lie.  Like  precious 
essences  whose  strength  lies  in  their  purity, 
are  these  capacities  of  strong  emotion 
which  make  the  worth  and  vigor  of  a 
human  life. 

Stand  guard,  then,  over  your  moral 
condemnation  ;  do  not  let  it  go  out 
against  honest  error.  If  you  do,  it  will 
come  back  to  you  with  its  finest  fire  chilled 
and  cooled,  with  its  eager  impetuosity 
hesitating  and  half  palsied,  with  its  reality 
dimmed  and  confused.  Keep  it  till  you 
meet  a  bad  man,  a  false  man,  a  cruel  man. 
Then,  just  because  you  have  not  flung  it 
out  loose  on  all  the  errors  which  you  dis- 
approved, but  on  which  by  its  very  nature 
it  could  take  no  hold,  it  will  spring  at  the 
throat  of  the  wickedness  which  by  its  very 
nature  it  was  made  to  hate  and  is  bound 
to  try  to  kill  wherever  it  can  find  it. 

How  quickly  one  discovers  as  one  goes 
about    in    the    strange,   windy    world    of 


g6  Tolerance. 

protcstants,  reformers,  radicals,  philan- 
thropists, and  denouncers  of  the  world's 
innumerable  wrongs,  which  are  the  few 
among  the  multitude  who  have  kept  their 
power  of  moral  condemnation  pure  by- 
using  it  only  at  the  right  times  and  on 
the  right  material.  How  they  shine  like 
clear  stars  in  the  midst  of  the  lurid  light 
of  all  the  rest ! 

4.  It  is  a  truth  which  is  essential  to  what  I 
have  been  saying,  and  one  which  for  its  own 
great  value  cannot  too  often  be  repeated, 
that  the  Christian  faith  is  set  on  moral 
ends  and  can  find  a  satisfaction  with  which 
it  can  be  wholly  satisfied  only  in  human 
character.  This  is  a  truth  which  affects 
most  fundamentally  the  priesthood  of  the 
Christian  minister.  The  purpose  of  the 
Christian  faith  is  man.  Man  is  the  end, 
truth  is  the  means.  It  is  the  place  of 
Christianity  to  take  up  the  purposes  of 
God  and  keep  the  proportions  of  His 
ways  and  standards.  Christianity,  then, 
must  hold  man  as  her  purpose,  truth  as 


Second  Lecture.  gy 

the  means  by  which  that  purpose  may  be 
reached ;  character  ahvays  behind  behef, 
behef  always  as  the  gateway  and  vestibule 
to  character. 

Now,  the  priest  is  the  expression  and 
embodiment  of  Christianity;  what  the 
Christian  faith  is  in  its  great  impersonal 
abstractness,  that  he  is  in  his  active  per- 
sonality. He  is  the  keeper  of  the  things 
of  God.  And  of  what  things?  Of  truth, 
no  doubt.  He  is  to  find  by  every  most 
persistent  search,  to  keep  with  sleepless 
care  the  truth  of  God.  If  there  is  any 
truth  of  God  hidden  in  history  or  in  the 
methods  of  interpretation  of  the  Sacred 
Book,  it  is  the  priest's  duty  to  go  and  find 
it  with  the  fearless  search  of  consecrated 
reason.  Alas  for  him  if  he  leave  that 
work  to  be  done  by  unconsecrated  and 
perhaps  by  hostile  hands  !  The  keeper  of 
the  truth  of  God,  the  priest  is  certainly; 
but  always  for  its  purposes,  always  for 
men.  As  God's  great  purpose  on  the 
earth  is  man,  not  truth ;  as  He  will  freely 


gS  Tolerance. 

let  His  truth  be  misunderstood,  and  wait  in 
perfect  patience  for  the  time  when  it  can 
free  itself  from  misconceptions  and  come 
out  clear  and  sure,  but  will  never  let  any 
one  of  His  children  be  put  in  a  place  where 
he  must  necessarily  do  wrong,  —  so  (and  it 
is  the  first  truth  of  his  ministry)  the  pri- 
mary and  final  care  of  the  true  priest  of 
God  is  human  character;  and  truth  is  in 
his  hands,  not  for  its  own  value,  but  as  an 
instrument  for  that. 

You,  my  friends,  will  be  before  many 
years  called  to  be  priests  in  the  Church  of 
God,  With  an  ordination  which  you  can 
even  now  feel  hovering  over  your  heads, 
you  will  find  yourselves  set  apart  to  the 
sacredest  and  most  delightful  life  which 
men  can  live.  How  shall  you  account  of 
yourselves?  how  shall  you  ask  men  to 
account  of  you  there?  Paul  says,  "As 
ministers  of  Christ  and  stewards  of  the 
mysteries  of  God."  A  steward  keeps  his 
treasures  for  their  uses.  He  is  no  miser 
or  connoisseur,  keeping  his  mysteries  for 


Second  Lecture.  gg 

their  own  preciousness  or  curious  beauty. 
The  steward  of  the  mysteries  of  God  keeps 
truth  for  men ;  and  back  of  his  keeping  of 
truth  he  keeps  men,  he  keeps  human  char- 
acter, he  keeps  the  true  quahties  of  the 
best  humanity  in  the  men  committed  to 
his  charge,  so  that  those  quahties  may  not 
be  lost  or  corrupted. 

May  this  be  your  priesthood  !  May  you 
count  yourseh^es  the  keepers  of  truth  ;  but 
may  you  count  yourselves  still  more  the 
keepers  of  truthfulness  !  May  you  dread 
a  stain  of  error  on  the  truth  your  people 
hold ;  but  may  you  dread  vastly  more  the 
stain  of  insincerity  or  self-deception  in 
the  way  in  which  they  hold  any  truth, 
however  true  !  Great  is  the  power  of  the 
priest  who  thus  stands  guard  over  the  hu- 
manity of  his  people,  and  will  not,  if  he 
can  prevent  it,  let  the  most  well-meaning 
adversary  do  it  harm  or  dishonor.  He 
lias  the  most  sacred  of  all  the  mysteries  of 
God  in  charge ;  for  a  life  is  a  more  sacred 
mystery  than  any  truth,  and  truth  exists 


loo  Tolerance. 

in   the  world  but  for  the  sake   of  human 
lives. 

It  is  not  strange  in  this  world  to  see 
ends  sacrificed  to  means;  but  it  is  no  less 
sad  because  in  history  it  has  grown  so 
familiar.  I  remember  a  curious  illustra- 
tion of  it  which  I  heard  some  years  ago  in 
England.  It  seems  that  in  Westminster 
Abbey  a  good  many  Roman  Catholics 
have  been  in  the  habit  of  coming,  on  the 
day  of  his  sainthood,  to  pray  beside  the 
tomb  of  Edward  the  Confessor  at  the  old 
shrine  where  petitions  of  devout  pilgrim.s 
were  offered  up  for  centuries.  The  late 
Dean  Stanley  loved  the  custom ;  it  pleased 
his  catholicity  and  his  historic  sense,  and 
he  gave  it  all  encouragement.  But  it 
seems  that  it  did  not  so  well  please  one  of 
the  old  vergers  or  sextons  of  the  Abbey; 
and  one  day  when  the  worshippers  were 
numerous,  this  venerable  official  came  to 
one  of  them,  and  touching  him  on  the 
shoulder  as  he  knelt  upon  the  ground, 
said :    "  You    must    go    away   from    here." 


Second  Lecture.  loi 

The  man  meekly  looked  up  and  replied : 
"  Why?  I  am  doing  no  harm."  "  No  mat- 
ter, you  must  go  away,"  reiterated  the 
verger.  "But  why?"  persisted  the  wor- 
shipper, still  on  his  knees.  "  I  am  doing 
no  harm;  I  am  only  praying."  But  the 
verger  persevered,  and  gave  his  most  con- 
clusive reason.  "  No  matter,  I  tell  you 
you  must  go  away;  this  thing  must  stop. 
If  this  goes  on  we  shall  have  people  pray- 
ing all  over  the  Abbey !  "  There  is  a  sort 
of  verger  Churchman,  more  sexton  than 
priest  of  the  house  of  God,  who  is  always 
for  stopping  free  inquiry,  because  if  this 
thing  goes  on  we  shall  have  men  seeking 
for  truth  all  over  the  Church  of  Christ. 

The  true  priest  knows  that  that  is  what 
the  Church  of  Christ  is  for,  and  welcomes 
it;  not  merely  for  the  truth  which  the 
search  will  bring  to  the  light,  but  for  the 
searcher's  sake,  he  welcomes  it.  There 
lies  the  real  necessity  that  the  priest 
should  be  above  all  other  things  a  man 
with  an   intense  and  live  humanity,  thor- 


102  Tolerance. 

oughly  in  sympathy  with  all  that  is  best 
and  bravest  and  most  vital  in  his  fellow- 
men.  We  all  know  how  about  the  figure 
of  the  priest  in  many  of  the  centuries  of 
Christian  history  there  has  hung  an  air  of 
mystery  and  inhumanity.  Men,  women, 
and  priests  have  seemed  to  make  up  the 
human  race.  The  priest  was  separate  from 
all  his  fellow-men.  He  was  the  repository 
of  knowledge  which  nobody  but  himself 
could  understand.  He  lived  by  laws 
which  were  different  from  those  by  which 
other  men  must  live.  He  ate  strange 
food,  and  wore  strange  clothes,  and  talked 
in  strange  tones,  and  had  power  with  men 
because  he  was  different  from  them.  If 
that  was  ever  good,  the  day  for  it  is  past. 
The  priest  to-day  must  stand  in  the  centre 
of  all  the  four  horizons  and  be  the  most 
manly  of  all  men.  What  it  is  good  for 
all  men  to  be,  he  must  be  supremely ; 
what  he  is  supremely,  it  must  be  good  for 
all  other  men  to  be.  He  must  have  the 
widest   sympathy,   and    preach    by   word 


Second  Lecture.  lo^ 

and  life  the  broadest  tolerance  of  all 
honest  opinion,  however  various,  however 
wrong.  He  must  be  the  champion  of 
the  right  of  the  most  mistaken  soul  to 
hold  and  teach  his  opinion  until  he  has 
become  convinced  that  it  is  untrue;  and 
at  the  same  time  he  must  be  the  pattern  of 
intolerance  upon  the  moral  side,  and  have 
no  patience  with  any  sin,  however  respect- 
able or  useful.  It  is  the  fundamental  con- 
ception of  Christianity  as  a  religion  of 
character,  and  not  of  dogma,  save  as  a 
means  to  character,  which  makes  necessary 
and  makes  possible  a  priesthood  such  as 
this. 

I  have  not  left  myself  the  space  in 
which  to  speak  as  I  intended  of  the  de- 
tailed methods  and  means  by  which  the 
minister  of  Christ  may  cultivate  the 
broad  and  positive  tolerance  which  I 
have  praised  in  your  hearing  during  these 
two  lectures.  But  not  to  leave  that  sub- 
ject totally  untouched,  I  must  say  a  few 
words   about   that   power  to  which  many 


104  Tolerance. 

people  in  these  days  are  looking  as  the 
force  which  is  to  bring  the  most  discord- 
ant thinkers  into  sympathy  with  one 
another.  I  mean  the  power  of  practical 
work.  We  all  know  how  the  Church  in 
all  its  branches  has  wakened  from  its 
lethargy  and  become  aware  of  the  misery 
and  sin  of  which  the  w'orld  is  full,  and 
undertaken,  with  an  energy  which  was 
not  known  a  few  years  ago,  to  do  its  duty. 
It  is  an  inspiring  sight;  and  one  of  the 
things  which  is  most  beautiful  about  it  is 
no  doubt  the  way  in  which  it  unites  in 
practical  benevolence  men  who  are  very 
far  apart  in  their  ways  of  thinking  and 
believing.  The  Quaker  and  the  Roman- 
ist may  stoop  together  to  lift  the  drunk- 
ard from  the  gutter.  The  Churchman 
and  the  Agnostic  may  struggle  side  by 
side  against  the  pestilence  of  the  grog- 
shop and  the  filth  of  the  tenement-house. 
Nay,  more  ;  men  who  are  utterly  at  vari- 
ance about  great  points  of  theology  may 
plead  with  the  same   sinful    and  stricken 


Second  Lecture.  lo^ 

soul  that  it  shall  know  the  first  great 
truths  of  the  love  of  Christ  and  the  wait- 
ing power  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  All  this  is 
very  good  and  noble.  We  rejoice  in  it 
with  all  our  hearts.  And  just  because  we 
do  rejoice  in  it,  we  want  to  be  very  clear 
about  just  what  it  is  worth,  and  just  what 
its  limitations  and  its  dangers  are ;  for  one 
of  the  greatest  dangers  to  the  purity  and 
efficiency  of  any  force  is  that  it  should  be 
thought  worth  more  than  it  is,  and  ex- 
pected to  do  work  for  which  it  was  not 
made.  By  and  by  men  are  sure  to  be 
found  at  the  other  extreme,  thinking  of 
the  exaggerated  force  far  less  than  it 
deserves. 

The  defect  of  Christian  work  as  a  means 
of  Christian  tolerance  lies  in  its  tendency 
to  superficialness.  I  shall  not  be  thought 
hostile  or  indifferent  to  the  great  bustle 
and  glow  of  activity  which  fills  our 
Church's  life  to-day  if  I  remind  you,  who 
in  a  year  or  two  will  be  in  the  very  thick 
of  it,  that    it    must   be    backed    and    sup- 


io6  Tolerance. 

ported  by  thought  and  study  and  ideas, 
or  it  becomes  very  thin  indeed.  One 
must  sometimes  fear  lest  machineries 
should  take  the  place  of  truths,  and  lest 
the  necessity  for  instant  action  should 
crowd  out  the  possibility  of  earnest 
thought  in  a  Church  so  pressed  upon  by 
need  and  so  aware  of  duty  as,  God  be 
thanked  !  our  Church  is  to-day.  But  men 
must  think ;  and  the  meeting  of  men  with 
men,  of  souls  with  souls,  must  ultimately 
be  upon  the  broad  and  open  ground  of 
thought.  And  unless  I  can  do  more  than 
simply  forget  for  a  time  my  differences 
from  my  brother  thinker,  while  we  both 
stop  our  thinking  in  order  to  set  some 
moral  evil  right;  unless  I  can,  clearly 
facing  the  fact  of  our  difference,  welcome 
it,  honor  the  spirit  of  his  thought,  seek 
for  enlightenment  on  my  own  thought 
from  his,  and  not  dream  of  even  wishing 
to  silence  or  to  change  his  thought 
except  by  reason,  —  unless  I  gain  by 
my   fellow-work   with   him   that    precious 


Second  Lecture.  107 

harmony  between  personal  conviction  and 
cordial  sympathy,  I  am  not  growing  tol- 
erant. Tolerance  does  not  mean  the 
forgetting  of  differences,  but  the  clear 
recognition  of  them  and  the  hearty  ac- 
ceptance and   use  of  them. 

It  is  possible  for  the  fellowship  of  work 
to  help  us  to  all  that;  and  when  it  does 
so,  it  is  good  indeed.  It  must  not  sac- 
rifice personal  conviction  to  immediate 
efficiency.  It  must  take  those  who  join 
in  doing  it  deep  down  into  that  under- 
world where  personal  convictions  find 
the  everlasting  principles  of  which  they 
are  the  individual  expressions.  It  must 
invade  and  not  evade  the  world  of 
thought.  It  must  reach  and  live  in  the 
unity  which  lies  below,  and  not  the  unity 
which  lies  above,  the  puzzling  questions 
of  the  soul.  So  only  is  its  work  thorough 
and  permanent.  So  only  does  work  bring 
tolerance.  So  only  do  the  mission  and 
the  hospital  and  the  parish  machinery, 
the  men's  clubs  and   the    mother's  meet- 


io8  Tolerance. 

ings,  become  good  for  the  soul.  Such 
power  may  work  have  with  you,  my 
friends,  forever  enlarging  and  opening 
your  deepest  lives. 

Thus  I  have  tried  in  these  two  lectures 
to  speak  of  the  nature,  the  methods,  and 
the  prospects  of  tolerance.  If  I  have  at 
all  succeeded  in  what  I  have  undertaken 
to  do,  one  conviction,  of  which  I  just 
spoke  as  I  closed  the  other  evening, 
must  have  grown  stronger  and  stronger 
in  you  as  I  have  spoken.  That  convic- 
tion is  that  tolerance  is  not  a  special 
quality  or  attainment  of  life  so  much  as 
it  is  an  utterance  of  the  life  itself.  Intoler- 
ance is  meagreness  of  life.  He  whose 
life  grows  abundant,  grows  into  sympathy 
with  the  lives  of  fellow-men,  as  when  one 
pool  among  the  many  on  the  sea-shore 
rocks  fills  itself  full,  it  overflows  and  be- 
comes one  with  the  other  pools,  making 
them  also  one  with  each  other  all  over 
the  broad  expanse. 


Second  Lecture.  log 

What  then  we  need  is  fuller  life.     There 
is  no  word    of  Christ    more    tempting   to 
any    man    who    craves    the    largest    and 
healthiest    relations    with    his    fellow- men 
than   that  word   which    is   written    in  the 
tenth  chapter  of  St.   John :   "  I   am  come 
that  they  might  have   life,  and  that   they 
might   have    it    more    abundantly."      We 
may  adjust  relations  as  we  will;    we  may 
decide  just   how  far   we    can   co-operate 
with  this   or  that   heretic;  we   may  draw 
careful    distinctions    between    the   various 
classes  of  opinions  about  which  we  differ, 
labelling   some    essential,  and    some  non- 
essential.    It  is  all  surface-work ;    it  is  all 
uncertain ;    it   is  full    of  mischief  and    of 
blunders;     it   is    always    joining   together 
souls  which  have   no  sympathy  with   one 
another,  and  throwing  apart  souls  which 
ought   to   be  parts   of    each    other's    life. 
Only  a  deeper  vitality,  a  richer  filling  of 
our   spirits  with   the    Spirit   of  God ;    an 
assurance  of  the  possible  divineness  of  the 
human    life    by   an    experience    of    how 


/  /  o  Tolerance. 

richly  it  may  be  filled  with  divinity,  — 
only  this  can  make  us  be  to  our  breth- 
ren and  make  them  be  to  us  all  that 
God  designed. 

My  friends,  be  more  afraid  of  the  little- 
ness than  of  the  largeness  of  life.  Let 
that  be  your  rule  about  your  people  when 
you  come  to  be  their  minister. 

Never  let  yourself  think,  and  never  al- 
low them  to  think,  that  mere  intolerance 
upon  their  part,  mere  bitterness  against 
those  who  differ  from  them  or  from  their 
Church,  is  faith. 

Never  discourage  them  from  thinking. 
If  they  are  thinking  wrong,  do  not  try  to 
stop  their  thinking,  but  teach  them  to 
think  right. 

Never  doubt  their  capacity  for  the  best 
faith,  the  profoundest  experience,  the  lar- 
gest liberty. 

And  for  yourself,  let  the  same  rule  be 
master.  Be  more  afraid  of  the  littleness 
than  of  the  largeness  of  life.  Seek  with 
study  and  with  prayer  for  the  most  clear 


Second  Lecture.  1 1 1 

and  confident  convictions ;  and  when  you 
have  won  them,  hold  them  so  largely  and 
vitally  that  they  shall  be  to  you,  not  the 
walls  which  separate  ycu  from  your 
brethren  who  have  other  convictions  than 
yours,  but  the  medium  through  which  you 
enter  into  understanding  of  and  sympathy 
with  them,  as  the  ocean,  which  once  was 
the  barrier  between  the  nations,  is  now  the 
highway  for  their  never-resting  ships,  and 
makes  the  whole  world  one. 

This  is  true  tolerance.  Into  a  deeper 
and  deeper  abundance  of  that  tolerance 
may  our  Master  lead  all  of  us  whom  He 
has  called  to  be  His  ministers! 


University  Press:  John  Wilson  &  Son,  Cambridge. 


DATE  DUE 


FEB 

2  3  1972 

^FB  1  ^ 

197'^  rf 

'    L  U     J.    «J 

1  J  t  L.      I 

VOL 

2  1973 

,l)L 

2 1973  7 

GAYLORD 

PRINTED  IN  U.S.A. 

UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  947  518    7 


.-  ./r.  •i.v.Miv'iiV. '"■■■.■'■   I 


fe'Ci.:; 


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